


Darkness Craves The Mind

by MomentumDeferred, tj_teejay



Series: The *other* Sunshineverse(s) [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Biological Warfare, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Neurological Disorders, Post-Apocalypse, Sunshineverse, Survival, Terminal Illnesses, Whump, feral!Matt, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 03:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5114429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tj_teejay/pseuds/tj_teejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why is it always Matt who gets the short end of the stick, and the shittiest, most brutal one, to boot? As if an alien invasion isn’t enough to have Foggy and Karen go out of their minds with worry… (Plays in the same universe as MomentumDeferred's story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547">“Sunshine”</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Need To Lose To Make It Right

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547) by [MomentumDeferred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred). 



> Titled after [“40 Miles From The Sun”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lvws6aHZ3w) by Bush. 
> 
> **TeeJay**  
>  Well, this started out with me saying to Ash, “Hey, uhm, I kinda feel like wanting to write super angsty whump in the Sunshineverse.” And then I pitched my idea, she basically pounced on it, and about thirty _Hey-what-if-x-happened_ -s over Skype later, it turned into… this.  
> So, uh, if you’re looking for fluff, run. Fast. Cause this ain’t it. If you’re looking for something that’ll effortlessly rip your heart out, yeah, you might be in the right place. Settle in. Bring plenty of comfort food.  
> Huge thanks to Ash for helping out with the story ideas. _So_ , so many of them—you wouldn’t believe the conversations we’ve had around this fic! And of course for helping me write some of it. And the beta. And everything!
> 
>  **Ash**  
>  This was TeeJay's idea, not mine. I wanted them skipping through a field of daisies while Slayer plays in the background. [TJ: Don’t believe her. She’s totally lying. I have Skype conversations to prove it.]
> 
>  **Foggy, more?**  
>  If you’re interested in more stories and shenanigans related to the Sunshineverse, check out [Ash’s](http://sunshineverse.tumblr.com/) or [TeeJay’s](http://half-feral.tumblr.com/) Sunshineverse Tumblrs.
> 
>  **Timeframe**  
>  Undisclosed time during chapter 18. They’re still living in Eric’s apartment in Brooklyn. This is AU where the Sunshineverse is concerned, cause making it canon would just be too cruel.

It was going to get dark in an hour, and Foggy was getting worried. More than worried.

“Karen, we should go look for him. Matt never stays out this long. He always knows when it’s getting dark. Something happened, I can feel it.”

“You a psychic now?”

“No.” He let out an impatient breath, stopped his pacing in the living room of their Brooklyn apartment that they now called home. “I’m serious. He would have been back by now if he heard me use the dog whistle. Something’s not right. I’m going. With or without you.”

She sighed. “Fine. We’re taking guns. A flashlight each. We hear any aliens, we’re gonna haul ass.”

Foggy also packed as many medical supplies as he could carry. _Shit_ _,_ _Matt,_ he thought, _where the hell are you?_

Scattered green clouds hung on the horizon. Post-apocalyptic sunsets could actually be quite beautiful, but Foggy didn’t have eyes for visual aesthetics today. He used the dog whistle again. The response was only silence, and the rustle of Karen’s cheap polyester jacket as she impatiently paced a few steps up and down in front of the garage door.

“Let’s go,” Foggy said.

“Where?”

That was a good question. Matt could be anywhere. They should start mapping scavenging routes before he went out, but the truth was, Matt’s hunting patterns were erratic at the best of times. He might hear something miles in the distance and completely change his game plan. Foggy had seen it often enough.

“South,” he said. ”We'll stay in Matt's territory.” It was as good a place to start as any, and nearly guaranteed they wouldn't get jumped by a pack of ferals.

After twenty minutes of walking down deserted streets, randomly checking abandoned houses, Karen stopped moving and planted herself in Foggy’s way.

“This is futile. He could be anywhere. Brooklyn’s fucking huge when you comb it on foot, and it’s gonna be dark soon.”

Foggy blew the whistle again, for what felt like the fiftieth goddamn time.

Karen pressed on. “Maybe we should split up.”

“No,” Foggy said immediately. “Like you said, it’s getting dark. This is dangerous enough. Being out here alone without a means of communication is suicide.”

“At this rate, we could be at this all night.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Why, Foggy? Why are you doing this?”

A determined expression settled on Foggy’s face. “Because he’d do the same thing for me. Hell, he’d do it for you. Without a second thought.”

He already had, when Eric had attacked her. How was it that she kept forgetting that? Matt would die for the people he loved. Always had, always would.

He pushed past her and kept walking. She eventually followed.

+-+-+-+-+

Two hours. It took them two fucking hours to get to the waterfront—what he knew was the southern edge of Matt's territory. And they’d found zilch. Thankfully, they hadn’t run into any aliens either. Foggy knew to count his blessings.

They went as far as Brighton Beach—now nothing but black, oily sand and polluted water—and Foggy thought Karen had a point. The realization hit like a punch to the gut. Matt could literally be anywhere. Wouldn’t it make sense to get back nearer to the apartment? Matt would have tried to get back there if he was hurt or in danger.

“Let’s go back north,” he told Karen.

“Why?”

He shrugged uselessly. “I don’t know. Because I don’t have a fucking clue where he is, and that’s the one place that he may have wanted to stay close to.”

They made their way up East 13th Street all the way to Avenue R, flashlights shining into dark corners, always listening for the perils of the scorched city. Or a faint whimper or a groan. Anything. Foggy’s stomach was all knots and acid and churning dread.

Something laying in the street caught his eye. The light flickered off of it, which meant it wasn’t covered in dust, which meant it hadn’t been there long. Foggy took a breath and hurried toward it, feeling his stomach turn just a little more with every step he took. Long, metal, curved at both ends.

He bent down and picked it up, letting out a shivering breath as Karen caught up with him. She made a high, airless sound.

“Is it Matt’s?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, voice faint, as he ran one palm along the cold, smooth metal. Matt’s stupid fucking curtain rod. The only weapon he had that wasn’t his own body.

She stated the obvious. “He doesn’t go anywhere without that.”

“Then he can’t be far. Come on.”

They started off again; Foggy leaned the rod on his shoulder and hurried behind her.

As they reached the end of the next block, the cone of light from Karen’s Maglite hit something. It was also free of dust. She stopped.

“Oh my God.” It was a strangled whisper.

Foggy’s eyes darted to what she was illuminating. The curtain rod dropped to the ground next to him with a clang.

“Jesus. Matt!”

He ran as fast as his feet would carry him, crouching down by a crumpled figure that lay curled on the sidewalk near the stump of a stoplight. There was blood everywhere. Some congealed and caked. It was hard to tell where it came from.

“Matt? Matt!”

Nothing. Trembling hands felt for Matt’s neck. There was a pulse—weak, but steady. Alive! Foggy thanked all the Gods there may be.

Like a robot, he went through the motions. First aid 101. Matt was breathing. Shallowly, but breathing. Reflexes. No verbal or motor response, no eye movements. GCS 3. Shit.

Karen was hovering there, the flashlight on Matt. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” he shot at her, already checking Matt for injuries. “Give me some light.”

She made sure the flashlight followed Foggy’s hands. “Is he unconscious?” she asked stupidly.

“Yeah.”

“What from?”

He didn’t grace it with a response. Not that he had one. Where was all the fucking blood coming from?

The words _spinal injury_ danced around in his head. He had no fucking clue what had happened. Had Matt fallen off the building? Could he have fractured vertebrae? He shouldn’t be moved, right?

Careful fingers felt around Matt’s head. There was a huge lump on one side, and excessive bleeding. Another visible gash just into his hairline near his left temple. Well, head wounds bled a lot. He could have a skull fracture. Brain swelling. Brain damage. _More_ brain damage. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Karen’s flashlight wandered to his torso. Her voice was meek. “There’s so much blood on him.”

Yeah, no shit. Nevertheless, Foggy inspected Matt’s body further, tucked up some of his clothes as best as he could. The only other wounds he found were on Matt’s arms. Cuts on his left bicep. More smaller cuts on both hands and his lower arms. Those weren’t life threatening. The blood on Matt’s clothes could be someone else’s.

Foggy felt for Matt’s pulse again, just to make sure. Because he was scared. Scared shitless that this frail little body could expire at any moment and take its last breath.

The pulse was still there. The chest rose and fell slowly. Foggy felt little relief.

“We should get him out of here,” Karen said.

“Not until I know it’s safe to move him.”

“Safe? What do you mean?”

“He could have a spinal injury. If that’s the case, moving him could paralyze him.”

“This looks like a fight to me, not a… I don’t know, fucking car accident.”

“He could have fallen off the building.”

“No, the angle is all wrong.”

“You a fucking crime scene investigator now?”

“No,” she let out a frustrated sigh. “I just… you learn things, all right? He looks like someone beat the crap out of him. Whacked him over the head. Those are knife wounds on his arms. I’d say the risk of a spinal injury is pretty slim.”

She was probably right. And then Foggy didn’t have any more time to debate it, because there was one of those high-pitched screeches. Way too close.

Aliens. Worst fucking timing ever.

Karen flinched, then shined the flashlight around and let it linger on a building on the corner. “That old café. Let’s hope they had a storage room.”

The screeching got closer. Foggy picked up Matt’s limp body and slung it over his shoulder. God, the guy weighed way too little.

The building was still mostly intact, but what had once been a café was now a mere collection of rubble. The burnt rubber smell clung to the interior—worse than it did outside. Karen found a doorway in the back, and Foggy stumbled over the remains of what might have once been furniture or interior decoration.

“In here,” Karen hissed, and Foggy followed her blindly.

It was the customer restroom—or at least had been, once upon a time. Tiny. Tiled floor, a toilet, sink, soap dispenser, hand dryer. All useless now. Best thing, the door was still intact, twist lock and everything. Karen closed it behind them as soon as Foggy and Matt were inside.

Foggy carefully put Matt down on the floor, his back against the wall. There wasn’t enough room to stretch him out. Karen’s flashlight found Matt’s face. He was ghostly pale beneath the streaks of caked blood that had cascaded down half his face.

Blood loss, too much of it, Foggy thought. His hand came around Matt’s wrist. Steady pulse. Thank God. Foggy kept hoping for some kind of response from him, but there was nothing.

“Is he—” Karen began, but Foggy vehemently shushed her. She clicked off her flashlight. This wasn’t her first rodeo either.

Even through the closed door, the alien shrieking was way too loud. Déjà vu. That first time Foggy had sedated Matt. Against his will. Hiding from that alien, back in 6A. Cause Matt had gone into a full-fledged plateau that spun him out of control and catapulted him light years away from any form of logical reasoning.

They’d made it then. They would make it now, too.

Karen and Foggy held their breath, listened to the scuttling and clicking noises that were too close for comfort. Their mutual, shallow breathing was all they had, in the cramped space in absolute darkness. That, and the overwhelming fear and upsurge of adrenaline flooding every fiber of their being.

Minutes ticked by, long and terrifying and never-ending. They cowered there in silence for a long time before Karen switched on the flashlight again. She had one of her handguns drawn, Foggy found that his own hands were clutching his rifle, fingers clenched, knuckles white. He’d instinctively positioned himself in front of Matt in a feeble attempt of protecting the one person he knew he couldn’t stand to lose again.

“You think they’re gone?” he whispered.

“I’ve never seen them stay long in one place. Pretty sure they hunt on the run, they don’t stake out their prey. We should be okay.”

“ _Should_ be…” he repeated shakily.

Karen unlocked the door, opened it a notch and listened. There was nothing. She opened the door fully and explored the space outside.

Foggy crouched down by Matt’s side, trying to get his cheap, shitty flashlight to work. One of the plastic, battery-free, hand-powered LED ones. The noise of the few cranks he gave the lever at the bottom reverberated loudly off the cold tiles. The gears inside started spinning—reminiscent of a car engine refusing to start.

He tried to get a closer look at Matt’s head injury. Impossible, in this position and all the blood matting the hair around the wound site.

Karen came back. “They’re gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. The apartment isn’t far from here, maybe half a mile. We should go there. Those fuckers could be back. I don’t need to tell you we’re less than safe here.”

Foggy couldn’t argue with that, and weighed his options. Matt’s exterior wounds had all stopped bleeding a long time ago. The full extent of Matt’s injuries was still unclear, but what could he do without x-rays, CT or MRI machines on the floor of a cold, tiny restroom?

“Okay,” he agreed.

“Do you need help with him?”

Foggy was already locking his arms under Matt’s armpits to hoist him up. “No, it’s okay, I can carry him.”

“Has he come to at all?”

“No, still unconscious.” And it still worried the shit out of Foggy.

+-+-+-+-+

Foggy was sweating by the time they made it back to Eric’s place. Karen helped as best as she could, her Maglite a beacon of desperation.

The apartment was dark, but Foggy didn’t need the light to find the futon. He placed Matt on it as gingerly as possible. Not asking questions, Karen put Matt’s curtain rod in the corner where he always kept it, and got the old plastic white vinegar bottle with the modified top that she stuck the flashlight into. Their makeshift camping light. A poor source of illumination at best. It was better than anything else they had.

It took a long time to peel Matt out of his clothes without jostling him too much. Foggy probably had to thank the residual adrenaline for the fact that Karen helped undressing Matt without her usual awkward hesitation. She softly draped the fleece blanket over Matt when they were done.

Foggy maneuvered around it when he examined Matt. His flesh wounds were confined to his head and arms, Foggy didn’t give them a lot of attention. Matt’s left pinky finger was bent at an unnatural angle. It was broken. Foggy would have to take care of that later.

There was some bruising around his sternum and ribs, ugly red patches that would be blossoming into contusions in a day or two. If this had been a beating, it had to have been a brutal one. Foggy’s stomach churned, but he swallowed it down.

He shined his small, hand-held flashlight into Matt’s eyes. A useless effort—pupil movements wouldn’t say much about his neural status. The accident in his youth had made sure his eyes were non-reactive to light. At least the pupils didn’t look blown, which Foggy interpreted as a good sign. One that gave him the tiniest shred of hope.

Frantically, Foggy tried to remember the information from his medical textbooks. His brain came up gaping empty, like a fucking three hundred foot deep well with all the useful shit way at the bottom.

He felt the lump at the side of Matt’s head again, tried to determine if the bones beneath were shifting if he pushed against them. It was hard to say. Impossible, pretty much. God, he needed Matt to tell him. To tell him just how many bones were broken, and how badly, so that he could do something. Anything. Whatever it took.

With trembling fingers, he felt Matt’s body up and down. There could be broken ribs. His abdomen wasn’t rigid, so hopefully no internal bleeding. That was all Foggy could tell. It was a whole lot of useless fucking nothing for as long as Matt stayed unconscious.

A shaky breath tumbled from his lips as he sat back on his heels, grabbing the edge of the futon for support. Karen’s voice was half concern, half desperation when she asked, “How bad is it?”

Foggy wanted to cry. Wanted to scream. Wanted to punch his fist into the coffee table until it splintered. “I don’t know,” he said into the murky space between them.

“You think he has a concussion? Is that why he’s unconscious?”

“Yeah, probably.”

It could also be brain swelling, an aneurism, a blood clot, a stroke, or a million other goddamn conditions that caused brain damage. And Foggy couldn’t tell. Never would, probably. Not without equipment, power, and a fucking neurosurgery degree.

“Shit,” he hissed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What, Foggy?”

He pointed at Matt. “This. I don’t have a fucking clue what this is. What caused this. What to do about it. How to fucking help him.”

Karen’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder, and he flinched. She withdrew it immediately. It jolted him into action.

“He lost a lot of blood. I’m gonna need an IV.” He turned and went scrabbling around for his medical supplies, digging them out of his bag.

“What, like a transfusion?”

“Are you kidding? I don't know his blood type. I'm just trying to get his blood pressure back up.”

“With saline?”

“It's a...” he let out a sharp breath, “it's all I've got right now, okay?”

He dug out one of the bags—he had four, expired, but they were something, at least—and tossed it to her. “Put it under your shirt. Warm it against your skin.”

“Like with Jack?”

“Exactly like with Jack.” Foggy dug out a rubber band, an IV, one of those alcoholic wet-wipes in its individual paper wrapping. He laid out Matt's right arm and tied it off, rubbed it with the alcohol, flicked the inside of his elbow to try to get at a vein. They were sunken. “I need more light.”

Karen held the hand-crank flashlight so that the white-blueish circle lit the crook of Matt’s arm. Foggy pushed his index finger lightly into Matt’s skin. There was nothing. Matt had shit veins, even without the blood loss. He’d found that out the hard way.

It took Foggy three tries to get the IV in. He held up the IV bag, looking around.

“Karen, can you turn the coffee table on its short side, you know, longways? I need something to hook the IV bag on.”

She cleared the few items off of it, the makeshift camping light now on the floor. It dimmed the room by several degrees. Foggy fastened the bag to one of the legs with two strips of adhesive tape. That’d have to do for now.

Karen came back with a bowl of water and a towel. “I can clean his wounds,” she said softly.

Foggy took it from her. “No, I’ll do it.”

He started with Matt’s head, washed away the caked blood as best as he could and cut away some of Matt’s hair to tend to the injury. Karen held the flashlight the whole time, even when he stitched the wound edges together. The laceration near Matt’s hairline was taken care of with two butterfly strips.

They moved to Matt’s other side to get to his bicep and Foggy drew the towel over the cuts in slow, gentle movements. Karen’s voice interrupted the silence. “Foggy, I think...” She adjusted the flashlight.

“You think what?”

“I think those wounds, they’re spelling something. Like someone carved something into him.”

Foggy’s attention perked up, he looked closer, then suppressed a gag. Karen was right. Oh God.

“FREAI?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“Freak. The last letter isn’t complete.”

He could hear her swallow beside him. There was disgust in her voice. “Who would do something like that?”

Foggy couldn’t speak above the rage and repugnance roiling in his stomach. He clenched his fists. They both fell silent.

A long minute passed, then Karen reached her arm out to take Matt’s left hand in hers. “I think his finger is broken.”

“Yeah. I need to reduce it.” He swallowed. It would be impossible to tell if he was doing it right without an x-ray machine or Matt’s own internal precision sensors.

“Foggy, have you noticed that his tremor is gone?”

He hadn’t. How had he not? It should have been obvious! He should have noticed that. It was—It wasn’t a good sign. Not even the sedatives stopped the tremor. Oh God. Shit.

Karen must have seen the look of horror on his face. “That’s not good, is it?”

He swallowed, his brow furrowing. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Could be... could be the concussion.”

“He’s not brain-dead, is he?”

There. She’d said it. Foggy wanted to punch her. “No,” he said vehemently. Because he couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He had to believe that. It was just... Matt. Matt and his fucked up, super slow brain functions. He’d be okay. Some rest, time to recuperate. He’d come out of it. He’d—

Foggy didn’t want to think about it.

“Can we, uh… I gotta take care of that finger.”

He tried to remember whatever he may have read about resetting fractured bones. It wasn’t much. He felt the pinky up and down with his fingers, trying to determine where the break was. Proximal phalanx, most likely. That was where the swelling was, anyway.

There also was a long cut in Matt’s left palm. Not too deep, but messy enough. Karen helped him wipe away some of the blood. Matt’s useless hand—it would be even more useless now. At least for a while.

He turned his attention back to the finger, pulled at it, tried to shift the bone into the correct position. Or what he thought was the correct position. He had no fucking clue what he was doing. Which was normal, and still scaring the shit out of him. The nausea swirled even more violently in his stomach. He ignored it.

“Can you give me some of that medical tape?” he asked Karen, gesturing at his medical bag.

She handed him a roll of brown tape, and Foggy applied it carefully to bandage Matt’s pinky and ring finger together. Buddy taping. He remembered they called it that. That’d have to do for now.

They weren’t done yet. More minor injuries to be cleaned and disinfected. Seeing the defensive wounds on Matt’s lower arms and hands broke Foggy’s heart. A little more, piece by piece. It was becoming increasingly clearer that it had been some kind of hand-to-hand fight. Sentient beings capable of speech. Humans. Jesus Christ.

And there would have had to be a whole lot of them, because Matt was all lightning fast reflexes and badass ninja moves. He could backflip off of goddamn flagpoles. What the hell would have left him lying defenseless on a street corner, a block away from his curtain rod?

When he was done cleaning and disinfecting the last of the cuts, he gently put Matt’s arm down next to his body. Still limp, bereft of muscle tone and purposeful movements. Foggy cupped Matt’s face with his palm, letting his thumb rub gently over the scruff on Matt’s cheek.

“Matty. Come on, I know you’re there. You’re safe now. We’re here. Give me something.”

He waited. Nothing but shallow breathing.

Foggy’s own body sagged, his shoulders slumping. Tears were beginning to prickle in the corners of his eyes. He willed them away, sniffed his nose once. Not now, he was stronger than this.

He was vaguely aware that Karen left for the storage room, then came back with her arms full of clothing. She handed them to him with an elusive, “Here, uh…”

Foggy pulled himself together. “Thanks. Help me with those?”

“Yeah.”

He disconnected the IV line for it. Redressing Matt was a silent affair. Sad. Heartbreaking. Foggy had noticed that Karen had picked items that felt soft, that were comfortable. That Matt liked. Bless her soul, or whatever still existed of it. Tears threatened to fall again, but didn’t.

Foggy sat on the edge of the futon for a long minute after they had dressed Matt, hooked him back up to the saline, and pulled the duvet over him. Karen hovered close-by, unsure. Her voice was low, she pointed at the illuminated bottle on the floor. “We should conserve the light. Those batteries are gonna go soon.”

Foggy just nodded. He was too empty, too drained. The adrenaline now faded, all he had was rubbery limbs and an event horizon that circled too close around him. It took all his strength not to let himself get sucked into it.

She was right, of course. Always the level-headed of the three of them. Smart. Whip-fast if need be. Fucking slow at other times, like when Matt was trying to say something too complex for his limited active vocabulary.

Foggy checked the saline drip one last time before Karen clicked off the light switch. Foggy kicked off his shoes, and the apartment fell into darkness, save for the lazy half-moon shining through the windows from behind a thin veil of clouds.

He turned around and stared intently at the figure beside him. Willed all the life he had into him. Waited for him to stir, shift the covers, let out a moan or a whimper. Karen crawled under her covers on the couch, and Foggy did the same on the futon, the knot in his stomach not having decreased one notch.

His hand reached out to gently clasp Matt’s wrist. A steady pulse was thrumming beneath his fingertips—fast and even to make up for the loss of blood pressure. It was the only comfort Foggy could draw, and yet it still got crushed under the gnawing worry, terror and all-encompassing fear that he could lose his best friend any goddamn second if his body decided to give out and stop functioning.

He scooted closer to Matt, buried his forehead in the crook of his friend’s neck, the way Matt liked to do. And then the tears came, hot and silent and unstoppable.

Sleep came in ten-minute increments—if at all. Every so often, Matt’s pulse would skip a beat, and every time Foggy jolted awake, his own heart stopping until he could feel the next palpitation under his fingers. The saline continued dripping gradually into the little plastic tube in tiny, silent plops.

Foggy sent countless voiceless prayers to any deities that might ever exist, although he very much considered himself an agnostic. Perhaps it was for Matt’s benefit. Perhaps even for his own. Who said it wouldn’t help, and he wasn’t going to leave any stones unturned.

Images chased themselves in Foggy’s mind. A jumble of memories—from their college days, their first time in court, moving into their own shitty law office, Christmases and Thanksgivings at his parents’ house. A carefree, happy Matt, with that wide smile and hearty laugh that could make even the grouchiest person break into a mutual chuckle. It made Foggy smile to himself just a little.

It felt like another life of other people. Almost surreal now. A chapter closed and sealed, forever history. Foggy wanted to hold on the memories for both himself _and_ Matt, because he knew the virus had buried them way too deep without any access port.

There’d been that one night they had stumbled into the office, drunk, randomly quoting Monty Python. Or that time they’d given each other weirdly shaped stress balls, cupcakes, and chocolate anuses. Oh God. So hilariously terrible.

And then the whole Night of Revelation disaster when he found out about Daredevil. Foggy had long forgiven Matt—even the old Matt who had all his mental ducks in a row. Christ, he hadn’t thought about that in a long time. He used to think back to lies Matt had told, situations where he would have known things and still pretended not to. It had seemed like such a huge thing back then.

And now… Now the world was wrecked, chewed on, and spit out again. None of their previous lives mattered anymore. All they had was each other, in the here and now, and even that might not last much longer.

“Matt,” Foggy whispered. “Don’t do this to me. You hear me? I need you.”

There was no response.

+-+-+-+-+


	2. There Is Nothing To Be Done

Foggy watched the morning approach, the dim light of the rising sun, obscured by a curtain of clouds, filtering in through the windows. He watched Matt’s chest rise and fall, his pale skin, his closed eyes.

They’d made it through the night. That was something.

As soon as there was enough light to see something, he got up and did another neural check. Pupils, reflexes, pain stimuli, motor response. Still no change. His hope faltered. He noticed something else, too, when he checked Matt’s wounds. There was a whole fucking boot print on Matt’s chest, blossoming in stark reds and purples against the pale skin. Foggy wanted to throw up.

With practiced motions, he hung another saline bag. The noise woke Karen, and she sleepily rolled over to face him. “How is he?” she asked sluggishly.

“The same.”

“Nothing?”

Foggy sadly shook his head and connected the line to the bag, adjusting the dripping speed. “There’s an imprint of a shoe on his chest,” he said coldly.

Karen frowned but chose not to comment on that. She pushed herself into a sitting position. “So now what?”

“We wait,” Foggy simply said.

They did. The hours dragged on, slow and silent. Karen had her breakfast cereal like nothing had happened. Foggy didn’t even attempt eating anything. The lump in his stomach wasn’t leaving any room for food.

He sat by Matt’s side, kept his hands on him as much as he could, checked for changes at regular intervals. He shifted him around a little. Foggy had no idea when a person would develop bed sores. Probably not this soon, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

At some point, Foggy heard Karen rummaging around in the kitchen. He was tired. Tired as hell, but too wired, too scared to sleep. His hands found his face and he rubbed it, his fingertips pushing into his eye sockets.

Karen’s hand on his shoulder startled him. Where had she come from?

“Foggy,” she said, concern in her voice. “You need to eat something.”

A can of cold baked beans materialized in his hand, a spoon sticking out. There was a glass of water on the floor, too.

“Not hungry,” he dismissed.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. It won’t help him if you wear yourself out.”

Karen—the voice of fucking reason. Again. He sighed, listlessly shoving a spoon of the gloopy mass into his mouth. And then another. He barely made it through half the can, and it tasted of nothing today. A damn waste, because normally he liked baked beans and would make an effort to savor the taste. He preferred the MREs, but their supply wouldn’t last forever.

Not even blinking twice, Karen finished the rest of the can when Foggy put it aside.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not much. I just… I, uh…”

“Yeah,” she said. She’d watched enough of the two of them over the last weeks to get it. “Why don’t you lie down on the couch for a bit? I’ll watch him.”

“No,” he protested.

“Foggy…”

“I can’t sleep. Not right now.”

Her voice was the softest, most empathic he’d ever heard from her. Well, since... since she’d gone full-blown PTSD. “Yes, you can if you’d just let yourself. I’ll keep an eye on Matt. Tell me what to look for, and I’ll wake you when there’s any change. Come on. You need to sleep. Not just for you. For all three of us.”

There was no denying it. Exhaustion burned behind his eyelids. If only his determination would catch up with the realization.

“Come on,” she said, walking closer and holding out a hand to him.

He took it, and she pulled him up. For a fleeting moment, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and just hold her. Hold someone. Let himself be held. Just for a minute. But then she let go of his hand, and the bubble popped.

He gave her the rundown of the physical and neuro exam, showed her to what to look for. Check his pulse rate every half hour. Wake Foggy if it went below 50 or over 80. Check his pupils. Wake him if they were dilated or constricted. Check his pain reflexes. Wake him if he reacted to pain. Check for signs of infection. Wake him if there was anything like skin irritation, rash, elevated body temperature, shivering or sweating. Check his breathing. Wake him if there were any changes—deeper breathing, shallower breathing, snorting, gasping, snoring. Watch him closely. Wake him if there was _anything_.

“Did you get all of it?” he double-checked.

“Yeah. Breathing, pain, pulse rate, infection.”

“And wake me if there’s _any_ change. Even the tiniest little thing.”

“I’ve got this, Foggy. Go. Sleep. I promise I’ll wake you at the slightest change.”

It wasn’t much in terms of reassurance, but Foggy eventually gave in.

The couch was narrow and the groove where the two seat cushions met in the middle was annoying. For the life of him, he couldn’t find a comfortable position. More importantly, there was no warm body next to him, no constant shiver, no one breathing into his back. He doubted he would ever fall asleep like this, but eventually, the sheer physical exhaustion claimed his body.

+-+-+-+-+

“Foggy?”

He jerked awake. “What is it? Something happen with Matt?” he asked, slightly panicked.

Karen sat on the edge of the futon, wringing her hands. “I, uh, I think he peed.”

He quickly scrubbed a hand over his face, pushing his hair back behind his ears. He was with them in a few, quick steps. Karen had peeled back the duvet. There was a good-sized wet patch on his pants.

“Shit,” Foggy hissed. Why hadn’t he thought of this? “Yeah, uh, it’s the saline. All that fluid has to go somewhere. He… I think normally they’d put a catheter in him, and…” he trailed off.

A catheter. They didn’t have one. Not that he thought he could ever stick a plastic tube up Matt’s penis. Or, well, maybe if he absolutely had to. It was definitely at the very bottom of the ‘things you wanna do with your best friend’ list.

But, yeah, they had to do something about this. He’d have to get creative. Not like that was anything new, right?

“Did anything else happen? With Matt?” he asked.

“No. I did everything you said. Still unconscious. No change.” She sounded as deflated as Foggy felt. Well, it was a good thing there was no sign of worsening, but, damn. No change at all? It had been—what? Several hours. What did that mean?

“How long was I asleep?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Three hours, maybe four?”

Damn. That long?

He went through the motions again, checked Matt’s status. He couldn’t detect any change either. Karen stood there with a towel in her hands, red boxers, and a pair of ratty, old sweatpants that were at least three sizes too big for Matt. One of Eric’s, most likely.

“Hand me those, I’ll do it,” he offered before she could utter any of her caustic remarks.

She surprised him. “It’s fine, I’ll help.”

“He peed himself. It ain’t pretty.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that, seeing how I noticed it first. Do you _want_ me to keep standing around like a useless fucking puppet?”

He backpedaled. “I’m sorry. I just—“

“Yeah,” she interrupted. “Just shut up and let me do this, okay?”

He was being a monumental dick, and not even on purpose. This tended to happen when fucking disaster struck and he had to go on less than four hours of uninterrupted sleep. So he let her do it, and held up Matt’s unmoving form so she could clean him off.

“He’s gonna do this again, right?” she asked. “I’m not keen on a repeat performance of this every few hours. Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly have a washing machine.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but, uh… adult diapers would be, uh…”

She shook her head. “I don’t want these mental images. Don’t want them, you hear me?”

“But seriously, what can we do about this?”

“Best thing I can come up with? Put a bowl under his ass. Not the most elegant solution, but, well… It’ll save us from repeatedly changing his pants like a goddamn incontinent toddler.”

She said it, they did it. Foggy hated it, but didn’t have any better idea. He pulled up the duvet again and tried not to think about it.

Karen took the dirty pants and went downstairs with them. Gratitude washed away the dread for a short moment, but then he looked at Matt, and the dread was right back in his goddamn face.

Foggy studied him intently, wishing for some sign, a twitch of a muscle, eye movement, anything. Matt had his eyes closed, his face slack. He looked almost peaceful. Like he was finally getting the rest he deserved and never seemed to find anymore. The impression was false and twisted and all kinds of fucking _wrong_.

Oh, Matty. He needed to be close to him, make sure that he knew Foggy was there, waiting for him to claw his way out of whatever his brain had locked itself in. Matt’s sense of touch was so important, as much as the hearing. Foggy lay down beside his friend, scooted closer and gently turned Matt’s head so they could forehead-touch.

There was no resistance, and Foggy pressed a little closer still, carefully nestling his fingers into the nape of Matt’s neck with one hand. Matt smelled faintly of the Aloe Vera liquid soap he’d brought back the week before. Its scent had gotten the seal of approval from Matt’s delicate nose. Karen had used some of it when they cleaned the blood off his face.

“Where are you, buddy?” he softly asked. “Cause I know you’re still in there, and I hope somehow you can hear me. I’m right here, and I’ll be waiting until you’re ready to come out of this, okay?

“Just don’t make it too long, cause as much of a jerk as you are sometimes, I miss you. So fucking much. Matty. God, I need you. More than you can imagine. More than you will ever know, probably. And this…”

_Muscles completely slack. No movement. No communication. No sign of sentience._

He tried to bite back tears, and failed miserably. He pushed through them, his voice cracking. “This is the worst. Not knowing what’s wrong with you, not knowing if—when you come out of this. And if you can hear me, Matt, just stop this, okay? Right now. Come back to me. Please wake up.”

His voice broke and he choked on a sob, and then another one. The futon shook, but not from Matt’s tremor, and that made it even worse.

He cried into Matt’s shoulder for a long time—until there was only emptiness and a throbbing headache behind his sinuses. ‘Hurts inside,’ Foggy thought ironically. Yeah. So fucking much.

Karen came back up from the garage with a bunch of damp clothes and towels in a plastic box. Her gaze bounced off of Foggy, and she made a quick jerk of her head to avoid eye contact once she realized he’d been crying his fucking eyes out.

He turned onto his back and listened quietly while she hung everything on the makeshift clotheslines in the storage room. Things seemed to dry a little more quickly up here than in the garage. When she was done with that, she got a glass of water for both of them from the purifier and sat down on the couch.

Silence settled—heavy and stifling.

She stole glances at them over on the futon, sipped her water. Maybe she was searching for something to say. Foggy didn’t feel like meeting her halfway, but then she asked, “The day… you know… the day the world fell apart. How did you… you and Matt, were you together?”

He swallowed, closed his eyes. Was he ready to go back there? “Yeah. He called me, like twenty minutes before the first strike. Told me to bring as much water as I could. Cause he just _knew_. He knew before it happened. I never asked him how.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“At his apartment. I only just made it there when… you know.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. She probably had her own nightmarish memories.

“It was awful. We just… I don’t even remember how long. The whole night, for hours, we just huddled there. Waited. And then the city went quiet. He was a wreck. A total fucking wreck. Puked for half an hour that morning. The smell, the screams, everything. I think we both kinda died that day, just a little.

“Thinking back now, I don’t know how we made it. It was a small miracle the building kept standing. But we actually made it. And the aliens, they got close. We…” he let out a small, cynical chuckle, “...it sounds like ridiculous now, but we hid in the closet. We didn’t know what they were, if they could sniff us out. Matt could hear them from miles away. Always could.”

Foggy drew in a long breath, wondered how it was that all these words were tumbling out of him now, but maybe he’d always wanted to tell Karen. Tell her just how much he and Matt had been through. This was a start.

He went on, “You know, the first time we saw the full extent of the damage out there, he told me he wouldn’t leave me.” New tears prickled in Foggy’s eyes. He wiped them away with a quick swipe of his hand. “The next day we went hunting for supplies. Food, mostly. Ran into our first alien then. And he just… he took the damn thing on. With a broken mop handle. Told me to run. He was vicious and fearless, even back then. It was unbelievable.

“I would literally not be here if it weren’t for Matt. He saved my life, Karen. Time and time again.”

He stopped there, gripped Matt’s hand, and squeezed. It was limp and cold. “And you?” he asked.

She didn’t speak for a long moment. What she said sounded like it'd been choked out of her. “I don’t… I’m not sure I can... that day, it was terrible. I didn’t have anybody.”

_‘Not like you.’_

She didn’t say it, but Foggy heard it, loud and clear.

She furrowed her brow, rubbed a shaking hand across her forehead. “How did he, uh… become feral?"

“An attack, out in the street. We were both out, and they just... fucking swarmed. It... he was protecting me. When it happened." Foggy started chewing on a thumbnail, then stopped himself, took a deeper breath. His voice came out a little stronger. "He’s fucking fast, but that time he just wasn’t fast enough. The plateaus started two weeks later. You’ve read the notebook. It was a long-ass struggle, and it got worse every time. And you'd never know when it was about to happen. They’d be triggered by different things. Aliens and ferals, mostly. High stress situations. Danger. Adrenaline. That kind of thing. It was hard to predict.

“He used to ride them out in the apartment. They’d totally knock him on his ass. For days, sometimes.

“One time, I had to sedate him, when there was an alien outside the apartment. Well, eventually it came _into_ the apartment. The plateau hit, and Matt was losing his shit. He would… when he was on the plateaus, he would be… well, feral. No speech, no rational thinking, no reasoning. A hundred percent animal. And the fucking alien was screeching on the roof, and Matt was totally losing his fucking mind.

“It was scary as hell, and I didn’t want to do it, but I had the ketamine, and, well… it wasn’t like I had a fucking choice.”

“You drugged him against his will?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. We hid out in his closet under the roof access. The alien came and went, and there I was with a sedated almost-feral drooling into my lap. One of our high points.”

“And Matt? Did he hold it against you when he woke up?”

The memory hit Foggy like a punch to the gut, because he should have. He fucking should have. Foggy shook his head. “No. He puked his guts out and thanked me. It didn’t… it didn’t feel right. Still doesn’t. But that’s Matt Murdock for you.”

“You said he left when he turned fully feral.”

Foggy scrunched up his face in a pained expression. Yeah, Jesus, _that_ night. The worst ever of his whole fucking life. Worse even than the day the aliens invaded. Cause at least then he’d had Matt. He wasn’t sure he wanted to dredge all that up again.

“He did. I thought for sure he’d kill me. But he didn’t.”

“The flare gun, right?”

Foggy let out a long, despondent breath. “Yeah, thanks for the reminder that I had to shoot my best friend right in the damn face. Cause I’m really fucking proud of that.”

“Foggy, I’m sorry.” It sounded like she meant it.

He sighed. “It’s okay. It happened. Sometimes I can forget that that scar came from me. I think he long has. I don’t even know if he remembers. Probably not. But who knows?”

Karen asked more questions, and Foggy talked. He talked for a long time, and Karen listened. Listened to all the stories, all the ridiculous and terrifying things they’d been through. Crumpled paper balls and hot chocolate. Precision shooting on the roof and crossword puzzles. Their whole damn post-apocalyptic history.

He wanted to ask his own questions, but Karen masterfully dodged them all, and so he stopped trying after a while. Maybe they’d get there. Sometime in the future. Her frozen shell had only just begun to thaw, he knew he shouldn’t be pressing too much.

When darkness slowly began to descend, Foggy did another examination of Matt. He disconnected the saline drip for the night. Only two bags left, he needed to economize. And he prayed to whatever deity was out there that he wouldn’t need them all.

There was still no sign of change. Foggy looked and looked, and looked again. Unresponsive in every aspect. He wanted to punch something, hard and brutal. Now.

He all but stormed down to the garage, and found the nearest object that didn’t look as if it would ever be needed again. It turned out to be a rusty old exhaust pipe. He threw it against the wall as hard as he could. His scream echoed around the room with a harsh acrimony. It felt both good and terrible, and crushed everything around his shoulders just so much harder.

In the end, he stumbled to the stairs and sank down on them, his face in his hands. He’d sat here with a distraught Matt who had strewn Cheerios across the floor with the involuntarily jerk of his left hand. He’d limped up these stairs, leaning his weight on Matt to make it to the top. He’d watched Matt bound them up and down with new supplies and random shit they’d found and dragged up there.

He clenched his fists and just endured. Nothing could ever make this right. Nothing short of Matt waking up and gluing all his shards back together.

Time ticked by in meaningless increments until he heard soft footsteps approaching. Karen came down, flashlight in hand, and sat down next to him. Her voice was low and gentle.

“Foggy?”

He didn’t say anything, because what was there to say?

“Do you wanna come up?”

Did he? Well, he’d have to eventually, right?

Her hand sought out his knee, and he tried not to flinch. She squeezed it just slightly. “Come on, you can’t stay here all night.”

“Yeah,” he finally said and let himself be guided upstairs. It was going to be another long night. He hoped he had the strength to make it through.

+-+-+-+-+

He didn’t sleep much better than the previous night. The constant company of Matt’s tremor had become so ingrained in his brain that the absence of it didn’t feel right. He woke up too often, disoriented at first, then reality crashed back down. And still no sign of movement from Matt.

He didn’t know what to do, couldn’t find the right position to get comfortable in, couldn’t wrap his body around Matt’s either. In the end he half draped Matt’s limp arm across his own and tried to fall back asleep. It was a meager comfort at best.

By the time he woke up, the sun had already risen. There was movement near him, and he was surprised to find Karen gently tending to Matt, the way he’d shown her the day before.

“What are you doing?” Foggy asked groggily.

“What does it look like?”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Because I figured you need all the sleep you can get. I would have woken you if there was anything.”

He sat up. “Nothing?”

She wordlessly shook her head.

“Shit,” he hissed.

Karen gently placed Matt’s arm back beside his body, then sat down at the foot end of the futon. She kept her gaze on Foggy.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?”

 _No!_ Foggy wanted to yell. _Shut up, Karen, just shut the hell up!_ “He will. He just needs more time.”

“You don’t know that. And how would we be able to tell without CTs or MRIs or any of that fancy shit? How long can he stay like this, Foggy? I mean, what would we do with him?”

He wanted to punch her in the face. Anger laced his voice. “And what do you suggest we do? Euthanize him? Put a fucking bullet in his head?”

She stayed silent, and Foggy couldn’t believe it. “Oh my God, you’re actually considering that?!” He jumped up as if he had suddenly become aware of sitting on an ant hill.

“I don’t know. It’s not like we can cart him around like a dead weight.”

Foggy’s tone was pure acid now. “So that’s what he is to you? Dead weight? Jesus, Karen, telling you all those stories yesterday, I thought you had at least the tiniest scrap of respect for what he means to me. How can you even suggest this? How can you—”

He was starting to choke on his own words, no longer able to keep the fury at bay. “Get out,” he snarled. “Now!”

She slowly got up and went downstairs, and Foggy wished she’d pack her things and just leave. He couldn’t believe she’d be so cold-hearted. Fucking Karen Page, PTSD-ridden, ruthless bitch par excellence. How could she?!

Indignantly, he rummaged around his medical bag for anything that he might have overlooked yesterday, anything that could help. He came up empty.

Still just two bags of saline left. He hung one of them, putting the dripping speed on super slow to make it last longer. He watched Matt from where he stood. His face still had that peaceful edge to it, mouth relaxed, expressionless. Foggy missed his elusive little smiles, and the broad, happy ones that made his whole face light up.

Truth was, he missed Matt’s everything. The hollow shell of the body lying down there was barely a ghost of his friend, but he also knew with a fierce certainty that Matt was still in there, and that certainty would never waver. He was there. Buried somewhere. He just had to be coaxed out.

He carefully moved Matt’s body around a little and sat down cross-legged by his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, skritching the skin ever so softly. Awake Matt would now have leaned into the touch and maybe hummed a little. Melted into a puddle by his side. He hoped unconscious Matt got the same kind of pleasure from it, and it was just the expression piece that was missing.

Foggy started to speak out loud, quietly. “Hey buddy, how did you sleep? Better than me, I hope. Cause, you know, as much as the tremor sucks, I kinda miss it. I know, that’s a terrible thing to say, but, well… it’s a hundred percent you. And I kinda need you back. With or without the tremor. But I need the real you.

“The you that doesn’t know to speak full sentences but still fucking tries every damn time. The you that asks me what this is, and the you that tumbles into the apartment with a new surprise gift every week.

“And I don’t give a fuck what Karen says, because she’s out of her fucking mind, okay? There’s no way I would—I would do what she said. You said you wouldn’t leave me. Back in 6A. I won’t leave you either. So let’s keep our mutual promises, okay? Cause I still need you to come back, Matty. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”

He waited. And waited some more. It was a futile effort, because there was still fucking nothing. Foggy wanted to scream again, but held back this time.

He held on to Matt for a long time, tried all the tactile stimuli he could think of that Matt would usually get a kick out of. He looked at the wound on his head, which seemed to be healing okay. No sign of infection, no other alarm bells.

What the hell _was_ this? Could a mere concussion really cause this much of a physical shutdown?

Then the nagging doubt started to creep in through the multitude of tiny cracks, and Foggy wanted to fight it, claw at it, rip it out by the roots. He didn’t quite succeed, because—

Because what if Karen was right? What if Matt’s brain had fully imploded? What if he had a brain hemorrhage and would never recover? What if the saline ran out, and he died of dehydration? Would it not be the humane thing to show him mercy?

Shit. _No_. That wasn’t gonna happen. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. 'Cause Matt was going to be fine. He’d wake up and it’d be all right.

And because Foggy wasn’t really sure what to do, he got one of his books, settled back on the futon with as much physical contact to Matt as possible, and started reading out loud. It was entirely possible that Matt could hear him, and maybe that would help him to find his way back. It was as good a theory as any.

There were no noises from downstairs, and Foggy wasn’t even sure Karen was still in the building. He couldn’t say he cared much. She’d lost the right to be welcome company—although he had to concede that, technically, it was more her place than Foggy and Matt’s.

Foggy was halfway through a chapter on the Krebs cycle (most of which actually went right over his head), when—what was that?

Was Matt stirring next to him? Yes, there was a definite flutter of movement. Eyelids sputtering into motion, a twitch of his arm. A soft vibration of his tremor coming back.

Foggy’s voice spilled over with joy. His heart was pounding. “Matt? Oh my God, yes. That’s it. Come on, open your eyes for me, buddy. I know you can’t see, but open them anyway, yeah?”

And Matt blinked a few more times, started to move his right hand.

“Matt?” Foggy asked. “Can you hear me?”

If he did, he didn’t give any indication of it. “Matt, come on, say something. Anything. Blink once if you can hear me.”

Matt blinked, but not just once. It could have been an involuntary reaction. Foggy kneeled over his body, checked his reflexes, his vital signs. Matt was definitely coming out of it, but not… not completely. But Jesus Christ, it was _some_ thing!

When Foggy lifted his eyelids to shine the flashlight into them, Matt’s right hand pawed at Foggy as if to push his hand away. “Come on, buddy, let me make sure you’re okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Explanation usually helped to make Matt see reason, but not this time. Foggy wondered if maybe he was still confused. If his battered brain just needed more time to get a grip on reality. Foggy felt Matt’s left arm. It trembled ever so slightly. Just barely palpable. Less than usual. But it could only mean his brain was gearing back up, restoring its normal functions one by one.

Then Matt’s eyes fluttered open and stayed open, and Foggy wanted to yell _Hallelujah_ _._ “There we go, Matt. Are you back with us?”

Still no verbal response, but Matt struggled with his arms, tried to push himself up.

“Okay, you wanna sit up, buddy? Here, let me help you.”

Oh, geez, the plastic bowl. That had to go. Foggy fumbled with it, put it on the floor, then tried to hoist a wobbly Matt into a sitting position. Matt seemed very pliable, and still very much out of it. He blinked, and then stayed motionless. He wasn’t twitching like he normally would, Foggy noticed. It seemed odd.

Foggy carefully let go of Matt, and he just kept sitting there in the middle of the futon. Staring blankly into nothingness. Yes, he would normally do that too, but it seemed… even more distant now. It was slightly disconcerting.

“Matt?” Foggy tried again.

There was nothing. No head movement to triangulate Foggy’s position, no twitching, no response at all. Foggy frowned. This was… he wasn’t sure what this was.

Time. He just needed more time. Right?

Matt tugged his right arm to one side—an uncoordinated motion without a clear trigger, and it made the IV line dangle. Which reminded Foggy of something. Could he get Matt to stand up? To walk? He could try.

“Matt, can you go to the bathroom with me? I’m sure you've gotta go, right?”

More blank staring. Foggy decided to press the matter, but first he needed to disconnect the IV line. Then he tugged at Matt’s arm and practically dragged him into a standing position. Matt was unsteady on his feet, but compliant, and seemingly without a will of his own.

Like a puppet, he let himself be guided to the bathroom and did his thing. At the urgency in Foggy’s voice, he even helped a little with putting the pants on that Foggy held out to him. He thought at least that was a small victory, because it meant that Matt somehow seemed to understand commands. The whole apathetic demeanor worried him, though.

“Come on, back to the living room.”

Matt followed, his steps a little surer, back to the futon. Foggy gave him a glass of water, which Matt just held. Right hand. Of course. Could be just instinct. Muscle memory.

“You gotta drink it, buddy. Put the water in your mouth and swallow.”

Matt did so, but incredibly slowly. Robotically, with an expressionless face. He emptied the whole glass and let the hand sink back into his lap. Foggy pried the glass out of his fingers, his brow furrowed. There was no fidgeting, none of his usual eye roving or humming. No indication that his broken finger or any of the other wounds were bothering him. Something wasn’t right.

But Matt had downed the water without complaint, so that was a start. Next order of business: food. There were some of the MRE crackers left. He gave Matt a small piece and instructed him to eat. Matt did, without fervor or pleasure. He just ate, three more pieces and the peanut butter, with the precision and apathy of an android. The worry meter shot way up.

“Matt? I know you don’t like talking much, but can you say something for me?”

He waited. There was nothing.

“Come on, buddy. I’d love to hear your deep, rumbly voice. Say something. Anything. Please.”

More silence.

He raised his voice, the command now sharp. “Matt! At least repeat something. Your name. Matt. Or mine. Foggy. Can you say that?” It was his boss-dad-Foggy voice now. And it fell on deaf ears. Unresponsive ears.

Foggy crouched down in front of Matt, touched each knee with one hand. If there was any indication that Matt was aware of the physical contact, Foggy couldn’t see it. “Matty,” he whispered. “Where did you go? And how do I get you back? Help me out here, okay?”

He pushed up to press his forehead against Matt’s. He may as well have touched a mannequin.

Foggy sighed—bone-deep and weary. He was tired. Tired of fighting for their lives, for his own, for other people’s lives. When was this bullshit gonna end?

Swallowing against the lump in his throat, he crumpled the MRE wrappers up in his hand and took them to their makeshift paper bag-turned-trashcan in the kitchen. And then there were Karen’s steps on the stairs. Deliberate and slow, like she didn’t want to intrude. Foggy turned his head to look as her eyes caught on Matt sitting on the futon, and she gaped.

“Matt! He woke up? Oh my God!”

“Yeah,” Foggy said, unable to hide the apprehension from his voice.

Amazingly, Karen picked up on it right away. “What, Foggy?”

He shrugged. “He’s… I don’t know. Like, catatonic. Doesn’t talk, doesn’t do anything. I mean, he kinda follows commands, but… that’s all he does. He’s been sitting like that for the last five minutes. I don’t know what that means.”

Karen drew closer to the futon and sat down, at a respectful distance. “Hey, Matt?”

He didn’t react, and she tried again. “Matt, can you hear me?”

There was a long, awkward silence. Foggy broke it. “I think he can, but it’s like his brain can’t really process it.”

“Have you tried touching him?”

“Yeah. His movements are mostly reflex. It’s like his body knows the basic functions, but the fine tuning is out of order. He doesn’t talk either. It’s… I… I don’t know. Shit.”

Karen turned to him, their previous spat momentarily forgotten. “Hey, Foggy, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not!” he snapped at her. “None of this is okay! This is all fucked up, and it’s my fault, and I don’t know what to do!”

“How is this _your_ fault?”

“We could have gone looking for him sooner. Because he must have been laying there for fucking hours. Most of the blood was already dried when we found him. Someone did this, and they just left him there, barely half a mile from us, and we didn’t know. We didn’t help him. Maybe we could have prevented some of this—the head trauma, the blood loss…”

“How could we have known?”

He paced near the kitchen door. “I don’t fucking _know_ , okay?”

“Don’t, Foggy. Please don’t do this to yourself. Maybe you think you two have some kind of special bond because of all you’ve been through, but you’re still human. You’re not a psychic, and you’re not a clairvoyant. You couldn’t have known. None of this is on you. And Matt would tell you the same thing if he could.”

He just let out a cynical huff. _Fuck you, Karen._

“You said someone did this,” she went on. “That carving in his arm. ‘Freak’. What do you think that means? Who did that?”

He shrugged. “How the hell should _I_ know?”

“But don’t you think it’s odd? It couldn’t have been aliens or ferals. They don’t know how to spell. So that leaves other humans. Uninfected humans.”

Foggy shrugged again. “So? You know we’re not the only ones who survived all this shit.”

“Why would they beat on Matt and carve things into his arm? Basically leave him for dead, but not finish the job right there?”

“Maybe they got distracted. Other ferals, maybe? What the fuck do I know?”

“Other ferals, in Matt's territory?”

“Aliens, then! Why do I fucking care?!”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious? What if they come back? Attack us? This place?”

“I’d say we’re pretty secure in here. Eric made sure of that. We have guns and know how to use them.”

“And what if they do, too?”

“So what do you think we should do? Hunt them down and teach them a lesson?”

She gave a shrug. “Yeah, why not?”

Foggy shook his head. “That’s not how I operate. I don’t shoot people for fun.”

“And you don't think maybe they did that to him for _fun_?” She raised her voice as she gestured to Matt, who hadn't responded to their talking, to anything at all. Normally, if they got into it, he'd be right there, between them, calming them down. Now, he wasn't even moving.

“I'm not—I'm not getting into that. In self-defense, yes, maybe I'd shoot someone. If necessary. And it’s not like I consider this my territory, or anything.”

“Well, _Matt_ certainly considers this _his_ territory. You know that.”

“And look where it got him! I just wanna...” he sighed, “survive, Karen, you know?”

“Don’t we all?”

His voice was strained. “You just seem to have kind of a twisted idea of it.”

“Well, you two were always the noble ones out of the three of us.”

Foggy frowned. “And what is _that_ supposed to mean?”

She drew in a long breath, and Foggy thought there was something there beyond her usual detached coolness. But then she dispelled it. “Nothing, Foggy. It was a different time. A different world. We all have our skeletons.”

“Yeah.” And sometimes Foggy hated being reminded of it, because they’d never have that world back.

There was movement on the futon, and Foggy watched with a disconcerted fascination how Matt turned to lie down, bundle one of the blankets around him and just curl in on himself with an expressionless face. It wasn’t even the good, soft blanket. He’d picked the closest one—the scratchy, woolen thing that he usually wouldn’t touch with a stick. The lump in Foggy’s throat intensified ten-fold.

“Did he eat, at least?” Karen asked.

“Yeah. MRE crackers.”

“I have some chocolate left, would that help?”

Foggy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

He was getting close to tears again, but he couldn’t. He was all hollowed out, wished suddenly he could be the Franklin Nelson version of Paige Page. Maybe that was why she’d shut herself off from the world. Just to make it easier to bear.

“Foggy, maybe he just needs more time.”

And why was it that _she_ was suddenly making a stand for Matt? That was usually Foggy’s part. Was she trying to make up for something? Their disagreement earlier? Leave it to Karen fucking Page to do a full one-eighty and not even bat an eyelash.

She ambled over to the kitchen. “Have you had anything to eat?”

He shook his head. “Not since this morning.”

“Come on, let’s eat. What do you feel like?”

He didn’t have an appetite. “Whatever you got.”

She leafed through the remaining packets, picked out two of them, wiggled them in the air. “Ratatouille or Sloppy Joe?”

He went for the Sloppy Joe.

Eating was a sad affair. There wasn’t any of Matt’s whip-crack _oh-my-God-there’s-food!_ snapping to attention. There wasn’t any, “Foggy, I want,” out of his mouth. Not even a tilt of his head or a hum. Just a bundle of woolen blanket and more of that fucking apathy. It broke Foggy’s heart.

The rest of the afternoon dissolved into sparse banter and more reading. Matt didn’t move much. At one point he rolled onto his back and just stared at the ceiling with those empty eyes. Foggy softly touched his upper arm—the uninjured one—and didn’t get any response. “Oh, Matty,” he mumbled under his breath.

He managed to make Matt eat and drink at regular intervals. Karen watched it with a sad kind of a look on her face, but there was something discordant hidden there, too.

When it got dark, they lit what was left of the apple and cinnamon scented candle. The burnt plastic and stale Oreos odor was still going strong. Matt had stopped complaining that “it smells” a while back, before his little concussion escapade.

The flame danced from side to side in a stuttering flicker, even though the apartment was well sealed against the wind. It threw grotesque shadows on the walls and ceiling, and Foggy watched them with a clawing apprehension that just wouldn’t go away.

Karen started prattling on about something or other. That they’d need to find a new truck to replace the one that was lacking a door. He didn’t really listen. Lying on his back next to Matt, he had one hand around Matt’s wrist, taking a feeble comfort in the steady rhythm drumming against his fingertips. It was slow and steady now. Stronger. At least that was something.

Karen’s voice droned on for a while, he wasn’t sure how long. In the end, she must have realized he wasn’t quite the attentive audience she was aiming for.

“Foggy?”

It sounded insistent.

“Hm?” he responded.

“Are you even listening to me? I’ve said your name twice now.”

“What? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I…”

Her voice softened. “It’s okay. I get it.”

 _No, you don’t._ He didn’t say it out loud. “Maybe we should just go to sleep,” he suggested.

“Yeah. Okay. Want me to put out the candle?”

“Yes, please.”

The meager light source ceased a few moments later, the acrid, waxy smell of the smoldering wick wafting over to where he lay. Foggy turned to face Matt for a moment, unsure how to approach this.

“Hey, Matt?” he started, and God, it sounded awkward. “I’d like you to sleep close to me, okay? Can you scoot over here and lie on your side?”

There was zero reaction, and Foggy took his other arm and slightly tugged at it, careful not to jostle the injuries too much. “Come on, I wanna have you near. Like you used to. Do you remember that? Can we do that again?”

Matt seemed to move, very tautly, reluctantly. He guided Matt closer, draped his left arm carefully around his waist. The barest hint of the tremor vibrated against Foggy’s stomach, but there was no Matt pressing closer, relaxing, rubbing his nose into Foggy’s back, pushing his forehead into his shoulders. Just a wet sack of stiff, yet tractable feral lying behind him.

Foggy tried to relax for the both of them. It didn’t work all that well, but he eventually fell asleep, listening to Matt’s even breathing. 

+-+-+-+-+


	3. We Come Undone Without Our Pride

It was a strange half scraping, half squeaking noise and a cold breeze that woke Foggy up. He shivered under his blanket before his mind was fully aware of what was going on.

Matt was standing by the open window, his back to the living room, and Foggy’s heart momentarily leapt in his chest. That was such a Matt thing to do. Breathing in the fresh air of the broken city outside. Had he come out of his stupor?

But then he turned around and there was that same bland expression on his face, and Foggy’s heart sank. He left the window open and walked back to the futon to curl into himself.

Foggy let out something akin to a whine. “What the fuck, Matt? It’s freezing cold out there. Why the fuck would you leave the window open? What is wrong with you?”

He grunted and got out of bed, wrapping his duvet around him. Karen stirred under her covers and grumbled something that Foggy thought had the words, “fucking freezing,” in it.

The window slid shut when Foggy pulled it down. He sealed the metal latch and went back to their bed.

Karen poked her head out of her blankets, eyes bleary. “Why’d you open the window?”

“I didn’t. Matt did.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Muscle memory, maybe?”

“So he’s still…?”

“Yeah.”

And because life was a bitch, Foggy just couldn’t fall back asleep. Yes, touch-deprived Matt could be a pain in the ass when one wanted to sleep, but it didn’t feel right not to have a wet patch of drool on his shirt collar, or a light snore puffing into his ear.

He just lay and let his thoughts drift until Karen decided it was time they got their asses out of bed. Foggy gave his best to coax Matt into any kind of activity, but for the rest of the day, it was mostly just robotic eating, drinking, peeing, sleeping. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Karen tried her chocolate trick in the afternoon. It did nothing. Matt ate the Lindor ball she had stashed away—one of the red ones that was the fucking best of them all—even if it had melted three times over and was mostly just a misshapen lump of creamy chocolate and sugar by now. Matt’s face stayed as impassive as it had been. The crinkling plastic wrapper that he’d normally be all over fell idly onto the futon beside him. Karen watched it with a frown, and Foggy with three hundred lumps in his stomach.

Foggy tried Matt’s tactile collection, too. Something had to jostle his memory. It just had to. But, nope. Whatever Foggy put into his hands, he held it, but that was it. No fidgeting, no exploring, no running his fingers along the edges and over surfaces.

Not even the big guns, a.k.a. the CD player elicited a reaction. Foggy could faintly hear the strings swelling through the headphones, and he knew Matt loved that part. Not a twitch of the mouth or a tilt of the head. Just more slow, impassive blinking.

Something harsh and ugly bubbled up Foggy’s chest. He yanked the earphones off of Matt, threw the CD player a foot away where it rebounded lightly on the mattress without doing any true damage.

He grabbed Matt by the jaw and drew his face up so that they were at eye level. “Matt, just stop this. Right now.”

Vacant eyes blinked slowly at him. He grabbed Matt by the upper arms and shook him. He didn’t care if it might rip the wounds back open or cause physical pain, because maybe that was what Matt needed. A fucking wake-up call.

“Matt!” Foggy barked at him. “I need you to listen to this, Matt! Cause _fuck you_ , you don't get to fucking go away, you stupid fucking coward!”

His voice rose to a shout, all hot and angry now. He was knocking Matt’s body back and forth in jerky shakes. “You're supposed to stay here and drool in my fucking shirt every night, you fucking bastard. Do you hear me? Huh?! Can your fucked up little brain comprehend that?! You don’t get to check out like this, not saying a fucking word, not letting me have a say—and worst of all, not coming back! You promised! You fucking _promised!!”_

Matt’s head just flopped limply back and forth. Foggy stopped, the sudden realization hitting home that he was giving him whiplash. Matt’s head sagged down to his chest. He became rigid and then weakly pushed Foggy’s hands off him, still all dead-faced and lethargic.

And that was it. That last shred of Foggy’s self-control slipped. He jerked away, off the futon, and stumbled a few steps back until he bumped into the wall behind him. All his energy deflated with a violent sob, and he sank to the floor, his forehead on his knees. The floodgates opened, and all the agony, the worry, the pain came crashing through—ferocious and unstoppable.

Heaving breaths tore out of his lungs between violent sobs, the tears hot and fierce, pooling into wet patches on his cargo pants. And then there was a light touch on his shoulder. For a fleeting moment he thought it was Matt. But, no, Matt would have just plowed right into his comfort zone and knocked their foreheads together so hard he would have felt the bump there for days. It had to be Karen.

Something tugged on his shoulder, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Soothing shushes reached his ears, his name spoken in hushed tones. It felt surreal somehow.

Eventually, he gave in, bereft of energy, and let his head sink onto Karen’s bony shoulder, his last tears sliding down his cheeks. Her thumb was drawing gentle circles across his shoulder joint.

It felt comforting. Like he wasn’t alone. He was, and would _always_ be alone without Matt, but with Karen there, the loneliness was just a little less absolute.

They sat like that for a long time, neither speaking a word. Finally, when he felt he had collected himself enough to be able to stand, he wiped his palms down his face and sniffed. Karen held a crumpled tissue out to him, and he blew into it.

“Foggy,” she said softly. “If there’s anything... anything I can do to help. Please tell me.”

He scrunched up his eyebrows, feeling new tears already forming. Not yet ready to speak, he shook his head. He got up wordlessly and ducked into the bathroom, splashing some of the purified water they kept in a bucket in his face.

The person that stared back at him in the mirror looked like a pathetic parody of himself. Bloodshot eyes, red blotches on his cheeks. Yeah, Foggy’s life was a real shitshow. Why not have the look to go with it?

He untied his ponytail and retied it, trying to get the few unruly strands of hair to stay in their place. That hairtie. God, Matt loved fumbling with it. And with Foggy’s hair. He’d comb through it for ages. At some point Foggy had considered trying to teach Matt how to braid, but with the tremor, it would probably be a fruitless effort anyway.

He let out a loud sigh and went back into the living room to find Karen sitting by Matt’s unmoving form, who was now back in a supine position with the scratchy blanket over him.

Foggy hesitated on the corner, listened to Karen’s soft voice as she made her own attempt at coaxing Matt out of his shell. One of her hands lay awkwardly on Matt’s ankle.

“… just gonna leave me here with Foggy, huh? No _'goodbye'_ , no _'fuck you'_ , no _'no worry, Foggy'_? You never ran from anything in your goddamn life, Matt, so why are you doing this now? This isn’t you.

“All those stories Foggy told me... you’ve clawed your way back from worse. Don’t do this to us, you little piece of shit.”

One corner of Foggy’s mouth quirked up at this. She’d grown to like the old bugger, and she might not have admitted that under normal circumstances, but here they were.

Foggy shifted on his feet, and Karen looked up to squarely meet his gaze. There was a sadness in her eyes that clamped around his heart and drew the screw a notch tighter.

“Thanks, Karen,” Foggy said in a low voice.

She got up and retreated to the couch to make room for Foggy. “For what?”

“You know what.”

“It’s okay, Foggy. I wanna help.”

He gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “You are.”

If you’d asked him whether he’d ever see the old Karen again when he first met Paige at the shelter, he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but this was her—as much of her as he’d seen in all those months since they were reunited. It gave him hope that miracles were possible. Or at least something very close to an actual miracle.

Matt shifted one of his legs into another position, and Foggy drew closer. He let his fingers explore Matt’s wounds, check his general status. He’d done this a million times in the last few days, and never come away with anything useful. Fuck this shit.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Matt,” he whispered, feeling lost, hovering in front of the futon for too long.

Karen’s voice was his saving grace. “You wanna sit with me for a while?”

Did he? He wasn’t sure. Maybe. Yeah. Why not?

She placed one of the cushions next to her leg and patted it, and Foggy felt all his defenses fall away. He sagged down to stretch out next to her, the crown of his head touching her thigh. There was warmth there. It felt nice.

Her hand came to rest on his collarbone, and he allowed himself a small smile. Karen broke the silence. “I, uh… I know it’s maybe not the right time, and maybe you don’t want to, but…”

She trailed off there, and Foggy asked, “Don’t want to what?”

“I liked hearing all those crazy stories you told me about him—about you two. I thought maybe, if you wanted, you could…”

His smile widened. “Oh, I could probably tell a hundred more of those. Anything in particular you feel like?”

She smiled back. “The crazier, the better.”

Foggy thought for a moment. “Okay, maybe it’s time for the shrapnel story. But I gotta warn you, it’s pretty gory.”

“Seriously? After all this?”

He made a slight shrugging motion. “All right then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So, uh, this one time we were, uhm, hunting around for food and stuff. You know. And a couple aliens showed up, but of course it was daytime, so Matt kicked the fucking shit out of them. I was shooting at them, and there was this car in the alley. I totally fucking missed a few times and I think I hit the engine or something, because the next thing we knew, it caught fire, and, well, Matt was right next to it, the idiot. Something exploded.”

Her hand tensed a little on his shoulder, but he went on. “I know they say cars don’t go up in explosions like in the movies, but this one did. Pieces just flew everywhere and one of 'em, uh. Right into Matt's head.” He tapped his temple. “I panicked. He panicked. Jesus, Karen, he dropped so fast to the ground, I thought he died instantly.

“It, uh, the explosion, it fucked up one of his eardrums for a few days. Sort of like what happened at the river, you know, with the sludge in his ears. He gets totally disoriented if he can't hear. I mean, that's his most important sense, really. And with just one eardrum, well, for a few days he looked like he was carrying a goddamn dumbbell in one hand, the way he walked.

“We laughed about it later. But Karen, he... in the alley... I couldn't find it. I couldn't find the shrapnel that he could _feel_ in his body. I was totally convinced it went into his brain, and... yeah. So I was there in that alley, sitting on my struggling, bucking best friend after cutting most of his goddamn hair off, and... and he just... he thanked me. The fucking idiot thanked me for being his friend. He was so calm. I don't know how he did that. Always calm, always... just... chill as fuck. Until a plateau.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I don’t know. A few months? Five, maybe. It was shortly before the end, before his last plateau.”

“Did they get really bad in the end?”

He shrugged. “They were all pretty similar. Just lasted longer towards the end. He lost his humanity more and more. You know, sometimes I think that he was saving up all of his anger just for the plateaus, because outside of them, he was always so calm. Serene. And he knew, Karen, he just knew. He knew the virus was gonna kill him, and he... he still... protected me. Stayed with me. And after every plateau he'd come back, and he'd thank me again for helping him through it.

“He'd thank me for not leaving him. Every single time. As if after fifty of the damn things I'd go, _'Oh yeah, I can't do this anymore'_ , and book it. Jesus, he thanked me for everything. He was always so surprised when he came to and I was there. Maybe he was just surprised he wasn't dead yet, but... I dunno. I dunno.”

He was quiet for a long time, then, “I really miss him, Karen. The old Matt, the half-feral Matt. And this Matt... I know you keep thinking that if he stays this way, he’s gonna be a burden. That he’s gonna weigh us down, get us killed. But the thing is… I can't do this without him.

“He's always been there for me. And I need to be there for him. I can't give up on him, not now. Not after everything else. He'd do the same for me, in a heartbeat. And you, too, but I know you don't believe that.

“He's strong and he's stubborn and he's a total jackass sometimes and super frustrating when neither of us know what he's trying to say but it's... he's Matt. He'll only ever be Matt. And that's all I'll ever really need, Karen.”

“Food helps,” she said, quietly.

Foggy chuckled, but it was teary and laden with a raw emotional intensity. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “God, please don’t make me cry again.”

“Why don’t you try to sleep for a while? I’ll make sure to keep an eye on Matt.”

He nodded ever so slightly. Her hand squeezed his shoulder a little, and a minute later, he felt eyelids droop. Before he knew it, dreamless sleep had claimed him.

+-+-+-+-+

He slept right into the night, with Karen sitting next to him, until he moved back over to the futon. Another lonely night with the ghost of what used to be Matt Murdock next to him. Foggy didn’t sleep well and watched the glaring sun rise through the window.

The day came and went. He went through the motions. Personal hygiene (the water still too cold), food (bland), examining Matt what felt like thirty times and coming away with nothing (again), swapping meaningless stories with Karen until she retreated to the garage (mildly entertaining but ultimately depressing), more food (bland), a nap (restless), reading (without actual intake of content), and just lots and lots of forlorn nothingness (the worst).

If he ever had to describe to anyone what despair really felt like, he’d be describing this.

That night, he lay on the futon, Matt’s faintly shivering arm against his side, and succumbed to those dark thoughts that seemed to want to drill into his brain. Those he had so far been trying to keep at bay as best as he could.

Because what if this was going to be the rest of their lives? What if Matt was not going to come out of it? There hadn’t been any progress all day. Not since he’d woken up.

He’d never abandon Matt, or give up on him. This, he knew with absolute certainty. But it would break him. It absolutely fucking would. And he’d have to work so hard to go through the rest of their days together. He wasn’t sure he could take the prospect of that.

But he was done crying. He had nothing more to give. Just dark, swirling gloom as bereft of light as the skies outside that not even the moon seemed to want to suspend.

His dreams were dominated by themes of something hopeless and frightening that he couldn’t remember by morning.

+-+-+-+-+


	4. You Will Never Know How Much You Shine

Without Matt—the actively participating version of Matt—there weren’t many things to look forward to anymore. This was something Foggy realized when they had breakfast the next morning.

Matt didn’t seem to be enjoying anything. Not his food, not being touched or interacted with, not feeling or chewing or tasting things. Foggy realized he would never get to smile anymore at Matt completely mispronouncing a word and subsequently making it two hundred percent funnier, or at Matt getting a kick out of some mundane little thing like stale candy, or Matt being happy over something completely small and unexpected.

Foggy chewed his MRE cracker, casting the peanut butter aside because today it didn’t want to taste even remotely like actual peanuts. Karen seemed to be feeling the same way, because she listlessly nibbled her own without much fervor or pleasure.

He glanced over and caught that _look_ on her face, and he went still, which, in turn, prompted Karen to meet his gaze.

“What is it, Foggy?”

“What?”

“You’re looking at me like I’ve... I don’t know, just drowned a kitten.”

“Yeah, no, I...”

“Come on, you can tell me.”

“You were gonna bring it up again, weren’t you? I’ve seen that look on your face before.”

“What look?”

“The one that says he’s gonna be a fucking liability and we should think of humane ways to end his life.”

She sighed. “Well, yeah. No. I mean, I wasn’t gonna say it. Because I know how you feel about it, but, Foggy, this,” she gestured at Matt. “This isn’t Matt anymore. You know that, don't you?”

He was silent for a long moment, because, yeah, this wasn’t the Matt they knew anymore. But it was a lot more complicated than that, and they both knew that, too. Very quietly, he said, “He wasn't Matt on the plateaus either, and he came back from those.”

She drew in a heavy breath. “I know. I read the notebook, remember? But from what I could gather, they never lasted this long, and he was never this far gone. Not that I can truly judge, but this seems different.”

Karen had a point. He _knew_ this wasn’t anything like the plateaus. And he knew the chances were growing slimmer each day that Matt would come back to them, that he’d just come out of this frozen, catatonic state, and be Matt— _his Matty_ —again. He knew, and he didn’t want to. Admitting to it felt like giving up, and he had promised that he would never ever give up.

But was this really fair? Was this fair to Matt to let him live on like a lifeless shell of himself, completely bereft of the ability to communicate? Of the ability to live—truly live?

“You know what?” Foggy said to Karen. “It hurts me to say this, but you’re not wrong. And the thing that’s killing me is... I’ve been trying to ask myself this question. Would Matt want to live this way? Would he want us to give up pieces of our lives so he could keep on vegetating like a pilot-operated string puppet?”

Her face grew into a grimace that was framed by hard edges of pain and sorrow. Her voice was small. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

“Yeah.” Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes again. Tears he didn’t know he still had in him. He rubbed them away quickly. “But you also know I could never do it. So damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Really fucking awesome.”

“You know that if you asked me to, I would do it, don’t you?”

His face contorted into something ugly. His voice was harsher than he intended. “Yes. But you can’t be the one to do it. It’d have to be me. It’d really fucking have to be me.”

They fell quiet, awkward, for a long time. Foggy sat on the couch with his face in his hands and Karen sat next to him. Matt stayed on the futon, impassive, curled into a ball with the scratchy blanket. The utter silence from a man that never stopped making noise made it feel like someone had torn a gaping hole through Foggy's entire world.

Karen spoke up, eventually. “What are we going to do without him?”

Foggy didn't lift his face from his hands. He couldn't. “I don't know.”

“I guess... we could join that settlement in Yonkers.”

“Yeah.”

“We can't live off the grid anymore. Not without...” she sighed, waved vaguely in Matt's direction. “They have a better purifier than we do.”

Foggy sighed through his fingers. “I don't care.”

“I think they have a better stash of food than the shelter. I think they're trying to grow things. Hydroponics or something.”

“I don't care.”

“There's a—”

“God fucking _dammit_ , Karen, I don't care!” Foggy shouted, getting to his feet, hands curling into tight fists at his sides. He was so fucking tired. He felt like he was a record stuck on repeat. “You're fucking kidding yourself if you think I'll... if you think I'll fucking stick around. After...” he didn't finish. He didn't need to finish.

Karen was staring hard at the floor. “It's... it gets better, Foggy. It gets easier.”

“I'm sure it did for you. I'm sure it fucking did. You don't even know what fucking emotions are anymore.” In the back of his head, he knew he was fucking up. He was lashing out at the one person who he had left. But he was just so goddamn angry. Every part of his body felt too warm, too wired.

She stared at him, and didn't retreat. Stronger than he'd ever be. “I _do_ , though, Foggy, and you know why? Because of you! Because _you_ dragged them out!”

“I didn't do shit.”

“You did everything! Foggy, you did _everything_. I know you can't... you can't be without Matt, but I can't... I can't b—”

“You're gonna have to figure it out.”

“No! No, I don’t! I _need you_. Foggy. I…”

“Foggy, hungry.”

“You don't need me for _shit_ , Karen, you're stronger than any of us will ever be!”

“Because of you! Do you not see the worth in yourself? Do you really hate yourself that much because you couldn't perform a fucking miracle on a brain that was damaged to begin with?!”

“Foggy, thirsty.”

“Just a second, Matt. Karen, it's n—”

Everything crashed to a sudden and painful stop. Foggy was standing there, breathing hard, Karen sitting on the couch, Matt's voice behind him. _Matt's voice_. He turned, slowly, like he was stuck in molasses.

And there he was, sitting upright on the futon with his hair in all directions like he'd just woken up from a surprise nap. He was wobbly, blinking slowly and unevenly, but his head was twitching, tilting around again. His expression was tight with pain, and confusion—but it was _something_ , it was a fucking _emotion_ , not that blank emptiness that Foggy had been staring at for _days._

Matt shoved the scratchy blanket off of himself with a low growl of distaste, retracting his left hand when he realized touching things with it was causing pain. Karen made a noise, about as close to the sound of a wounded animal as anyone non-feral could get. Foggy moved toward the futon like he was in a dream, this couldn't be real, he had to be fucking hallucinating, but no, Matt was turning his face in Foggy's direction, blearily tracking his movements, and grumbled aloud when Foggy sat next to him.

“Foggy, hungry,” he said again, and Foggy reached out and dragged his fingers around Matt's shoulder and pulled him against his chest and gave him the hardest, longest hug he would ever receive in his life.

“You're a fucking asshole, Matty, you're such a fucking asshole.”

After a long minute of squishing Matt tight against his chest, the latter muffled a low, “Foggy, hurts,” into Foggy’s shoulder, and, “thirsty. Why?”

Foggy let go, gently pushed his friend back, tears of joy streaming down his face. He let out a wet chuckle. “Why what? Why are you thirsty?”

“Here. Why… here?”

Karen was already by the futon with a glass of water and another one of the MRE cracker packets. She held out the glass, and Matt took it. With his steady right hand, and downed it in a few, quick gulps.

“Easy, Matty,” Foggy chided softly.

Matt’s face drew into a slight grimace. “Not puke. Am thirsty.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“Hungry. Can I?” He pointed vaguely at the MRE. _Emarie_ , Foggy thought with a smile lingering on his face.

“Sure, buddy. Have at it.”

Foggy ripped it open and put the cracker into Matt’s hands. It was gone in less than twenty seconds. The peanut butter, too.

Matt tilted his head sideways, his trembling left hand feeling for the wound there. “Hurts, Foggy. Head hurts. Why?”

“You had a… a bit of an accident, Matt. You got hit over the head with something. You don’t remember?”

He thought about that for a long time, raising his left hand with the broken finger, feeling the two pieces of tape there. “Hm. No. Don’t—don’t remember.” He looked like he might be about to cry.

“Shh, it’s okay, Matty. It’s okay that you don’t remember. That happens sometimes when you have a concussion. It’s normal.”

“Conk—cush… what is this?”

“A concussion? It’s when you hit your head on something hard, and your brain gets… uh… bruised. Gets hurt. You’ve been unconscious for a few days.”

“Have?”

“Come on, talk properly. I know you can.”

“I… I have?”

Foggy smiled wider. That was a good sign. “Yeah. Almost a week now. You’ve been out of it for a really long time. You scared the shit out of us.”

“Sorry, Foggy, don’t… I don’t r-remember.” His face fell, like he’d somehow failed them utterly. “Foggy. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, man. It’s not your fault.”

Matt grimaced again, expression shifting into something unreadable. “Foggy, need. Mm. Want, hur—gh. Don’t know. Foggy.” More word soup followed that Foggy couldn’t quite make out. It sounded like he had a million questions all at once and didn’t quite know which to ask first, and how.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Matt. Try one question at a time, okay? Slowly.”

Matt frowned. Hard. Then worked on the question, until, “I… here. I am here. Was outside. Wh—how?”

“You were injured in the street. You’d been laying there a long time. Karen and I, we found you and took you home.”

This seemed to alarm Matt somewhat. His hands twitched more, fumbled with the string of his hoodie. Foggy softly asked, “Do you remember what happened? Were you attacked?”

Matt just hummed, rolled his eyes around. Then said, “Don’t. Don’t remember.”

“It’s okay, Matt. But there’s something I need you to check for me. Do you have a skull fracture? Can you feel if the bones in your head are broken?”

He concentrated very hard. “Is… mm. Not a lot. Mm.”

Foggy frowned. “So it’s a little broken? Like a hairline fracture?” He could tell Matt didn’t understand, so he elaborated. “A hairline fracture is a very thin break, basically just a tiny crack. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

Okay. Well. Foggy wasn’t sure what to do with that. His books didn’t really yield much information about skull fractures, so all he could do is hope that, now that Matt was fully conscious again, it would heal on its own. With lots of rest. Shit, that was gonna be the hardest part, keeping Matt stationary and out of trouble.

“Is there anything else? Like internal bleeding? Swelling?”

“Is, mm, head. Stitches.”

Foggy smiled. “Yeah, I put those in. You better—”

“Not mess. I know, Foggy.”

The little smartass. Matt lifted his left hand, poked at the adhesive tape around his fingers. “This. Hurts. Off. I don’t want.”

“Your pinky finger is broken, I had to tape it. That has to stay on so it can heal, okay?”

Matt’s face said _‘not okay’_ , but he didn’t say it out loud. Foggy pressed on, “I had to reset your bone. Can you feel if I did it right? Is the bone in the right place?”

He carefully moved his trembling fingers, the pained grimace on his face intensifying another notch. “Hurts, Foggy.”

“I know it does. Focus on the bone. Did I do it right?”

“Yes.”

That was good enough for Foggy. “Okay, we have the finger covered. What else?”

Matt gingerly felt his left temple and then his left upper arm and the other cuts and bruises on his arms and hands. “This.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a few cuts there. They’ve already started healing. Also some bruising on your chest, can you still feel that?”

“Yes.”

“Broken ribs?”

“Mm. No.”

“Anything else?”

He stretched out his right arm, drew up the sleeve there with a trembling hand until the crook of his arm was exposed. His index finger found the place where Foggy had put in the IV, even though there was only a tiny red needle prick visible anymore.

“This.” Something connected in Matt’s head, and he hunched in on himself. “Foggy, you gave. Not—don’t want. Foggy, don’t remember. This, why?”

Foggy swallowed dryly. “Oh God. No, Matt, I didn’t give you any drugs. That’s not why you don’t remember things. I put in an IV line to give you fluids. You were unconscious for two days, I needed to make sure you didn’t die of dehydration. It was just to put fluids in you. It kinda saved your life.”

He hummed. Foggy could only conclude that his answer had been satisfactory to placate Matt, who now shifted on the futon. “Need. B…bathroom.”

“Okay. Yeah. Can you stand up?”

Matt slid over to the edge of the futon and slowly got up. He swayed wildly to one side until Foggy reached for his arm and steadied him. Matt’s right hand went to his head.

“Foggy, head hurts. Not hurts only. Is… nngh, the word.”

“Describe it to me. Are you dizzy?”

“Mm. Moves. Every-everything moves.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you’re dizzy. Like, you know, the spins?”

“Dizz—zy,” he attempted, the z sounding more like an s than anything, extended awkwardly. “I don't want. Make it stop.”

“Geez, I wish I could. Think you’ll just have to work through it. Your brain got knocked around in your head. It’ll probably go away after a day or two.”

Matt let out a small whine, then a growl. Yeah, he fucking hated it, and he didn't seem excited at the prospect of it lasting several days.

Foggy helped Matt make it safely to the bathroom, stayed with him all the way, made sure he sat down this time around. He looked exhausted by the time they got back to the futon.

Foggy never wanted to take his eyes off of Matt ever again. Something happy leapt into his throat, just seeing him active and talking and twitching and trembling. More happy tears pooled in the corners of his eyes.

“Foggy, you crying. Why?”

“ _Are_ crying,” he corrected.

Matt just asked again, “Why?”

“These are happy tears. I’m happy you’re back with us. I’ve missed you. Karen did, too.”

Foggy looked over to her, and she was smiling. A true smile that reached her eyes. Matt tilted his head towards her. “Karen not crying.”

Her smile changed into a grin before she said, “Doesn’t mean I’m not happy, Matt. Because, yes, I’ve missed you, too.”

“I am here. Not cry. I am okay.”

Matt went all in for the forehead hug, and Foggy took it and then gave him a little thump on the uninjured arm. “No, you’re totally _not_ okay, you jackass. Which is why I want to examine you again. Will you let me take a closer look at you?”

Matt didn’t look too happy about this, but, well, it was Foggy, and he was asking. He wasn’t gonna say no.

Foggy went about his business, Matt didn’t complain (too much), and everything looked normal. No wound infection, no neurological concerns beyond what he already knew. Just Matt and his fucked-up brain that needed two days to go into safe mode and another three to reboot to full functionality.

He gave Matt a careful hair ruffle when he was finished. “There, all done.”

“Am okay?”

“Yeah, as far as I can tell. But you need to be careful for a while.”

“Not outside?”

“No, there’s definitely none of that for at least a week. Cause… rules one and four. You remember those, don’t you?””

Matt grumbled unhappily, but, well, it couldn’t be helped. And then he seemed to remember something. “Foggy, I found. Something. Where is?”

Foggy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Outside. I was outside. You found. You found me. I got something. Where is it?”

“We didn’t find anything with you. Your curtain rod was a block away. Was it in your backpack? Cause we didn’t find that. We think someone attacked you, they probably took your backpack.”

Matt’s face drew into a sad, pained expression. “No, I found. I want it.”

“I’m really sorry, Matt. I’m not sure we can get it back. What did you find?”

More word search, patient silence. Then, “Book.”

“For me or Karen?”

“No. Book for me.”

“You found a Braille book?”

He tilted his head, maybe an attempt at a nod that he had forgotten how to emulate. “Yes.”

Oh geez. Matt would have been jazzed as fuck to find another book to practice on, probably wanted to proudly show it to Foggy with another one of those shit-eating grins. And now it had been taken from him. Instead he’d end up with scars spelling FREAK on his arm. That was just the fucking cherry on top of the suck cake.

It was Karen who cut in, “Foggy, it was pitch dark when we found Matt. Maybe we could go back and see if it’s still there and we just didn’t see it.”

Matt suddenly looked very eager. “Yes, I want.”

Fucking Karen with her fucking superpower to point out the most stupid ideas ever devised. “Oh no no no, Matt. You’re not going outside. Not in this state, you’re not.”

Matt whined. “Foggy, I want!”

“I know you do.”

“I’ll do it,” Karen said. “Tomorrow, if it’s not raining.”

Foggy let out a theatrical sigh. “Why am I surrounded by suicidal idiots who have zero sense of self-preservation? Because on a scale from one to ten of monumentally stupid ideas, this would land a twelve. And a half.”

“Come on, Foggy. I’ll take the rifle, and a handgun. The flare. The dog whistle too, if you want. It’s just around the corner, and there hasn’t been any activity in the area for days.”

“Yeah, and that’s what’s worrying me.”

+-+-+-+-+

And Karen did just that the next day—go out to see if she could retrieve any of Matt’s backpack. If it was still there. Foggy tried to stop her, but she was just as stubborn as Matt if she set her mind to something.

Foggy was on edge the whole time, looking at his watch every ten minutes. Which was weird, cause, uh, this was Karen. He wasn’t supposed to care that much about her. Or was that just something he’d been telling himself to… to what? Not hurt as much if she turned on her cold-hearted heels and bailed? Maybe. It had obviously been a ruse.

Matt was leaning against the wall by the open window, because Foggy hadn’t let him go up on the roof. He was still dizzy as hell, tumbling through the apartment as if he’d been spun around his axis thirty times and then told to walk in a straight line.

At one point, he’d even staggered straight into the doorframe to the kitchen, letting out a surprised yelp. Foggy had to try hard not to laugh. Matt still gave him a punitive grunt. He could always tell.

“Can you still hear her?” Foggy asked nervously, watching Matt absently run his forefinger over one of the healing cuts on his hand.

Of course he could. Matt could hear ten times the distance if he wanted. “Karen safe.”

“Sentences, Matt.”

“Karen is safe, Foggy.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Foggy, is o—it is okay.”

He wanted to believe it. And maybe he could. Matt had sniffed out the area way before Karen set off. It was part of his territory. This was as safe as it would get. Still, it was a foolish endeavor if Foggy’d had any say in it. But of course no one ever listened to Foggy Nelson, so what else was new?

He went to the kitchen, drank half a glass of water, paced there a little. He randomly opened one of the kitchen cupboards and shuffled a few items around in it. Then he paced again. Until Matt called his name, and Foggy hurried over to him.

“What is it?”

“Foggy.” Matt sounded… well, kinda boss-dad-Matthew, actually. “Not—stop worry, Foggy. You… move a lot. Too a lot.”

“It’s ‘too much’, Matty.”

“You move too much.”

Foggy couldn’t help but smile. “Is it distracting you?”

“Yes. Stop. Please.”

Foggy sighed. “All right.”

Matt paused for a moment, then walked carefully into the kitchen and came back with something he wordlessly put in Foggy’s hand. It was his cupcake-shaped dog toy, and Foggy understood what he was trying to do. It said, ‘Finger this, and shut up while I do my thing, okay?’

He tried his best, and once he got into it, indeed found it surprisingly soothing to play with the object, squeezing the squishy rubber this and that way. It was a good thing the squeaking valve wasn’t working anymore.

Finally, Matt perked his head up and said, “Karen is coming.”

Foggy smiled a little, because he was really trying so hard to speak in whole sentences. He’d get there. Slowly. With a whole lot of fucking effort and determination.

It still took another six minutes for her to get back to the apartment and up the stairs. She wasn’t carrying Matt’s backpack, but her own was a little bulkier than before. She took it off and placed it on the coffee table. Matt and Foggy hovered expectantly close-by.

She was still slightly out of breath. “Good or bad news first?”

“Bad,” Foggy said.

“Good,” Matt said, at the same time.

She grinned. “Okay, well, then let’s start with the bad news first, cause that’s what I’d pick. I didn’t find Matt’s backpack. Good news is, I found a few of the things that were in it. More bad news is that some of them didn’t quite survive unscathed.”

Her hands zipped her backpack open and she started taking things out to put them on the table. It wasn’t much. Foggy’s shaving brush that Matt would sometimes secretly take because he loved the bristles. A CD that had splintered into three pieces and seemed to be missing at least one. And last but not least the Braille book, now tattered and ruined by prolonged exposure to the rain.

Matt crouched down by the table and felt the objects, small and woeful and upset. His left hand shivered over the CD like it was a crown jewel, brow furrowing deeply when he felt the serrated edges of the part where it had been snapped into pieces. He placed it down again gently, then went for the book.

Some of the pages came away right in his hand when he tried to open it. They were all warped from the extended exposure to water, some ripped, some still sodden, the Braille dots ruined on the majority of them. There were shoe prints on the cover and most of it was completely useless. The look on Matt’s face broke Foggy’s heart.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” Karen said sadly. “That’s all I could find.”

“Is okay,” he mumbled, and clearly it wasn’t.

She kneeled down next to Matt and tried to puzzle the CD pieces back together. It was missing a huge chunk on one side. “I was hoping I could glue it back together, but it’s lost too big a piece. Do you want to know what was on it?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“It reads, ‘Eddie Vedder – Into the Wild’. I think it’s a soundtrack. You know, the music from a movie?”

Foggy supplied, “I’ve seen it, actually. The music was kinda singer-songwriter style. Guitar and vocals. I think you would have liked it, Matt.”

Another wave of sadness rippled across Matt’s face, stabbing Foggy right in the stomach. He crouched down on Matt’s other side, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I know it sucks, buddy. We’ll try to find you another CD. There’s gotta be more than Vivaldi, four songs from the 70’s, and Eddie Vedder out there.”

It didn’t help much, so Foggy tried the shittier of approaches. Distraction.

“Matt, do you remember what else was in your backpack? What they, whoever _they_ were, might have taken?”

Another frown, but this one more concentration than woe. “Food. A lot. C-cans. Not Skittles. Was like Skittles. Different.”

“Candy?”

“Like Skittles. Mm. Hard. Chocolate.” He curled his index finger into a loop against his thumb and indicated something approximately the size of a blueberry.

Foggy looked at Karen. “M&Ms?” To Matt he said, “Were there peanuts in them? Or peanut butter?”

“Don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s gone anyway. But, man, peanut butter M&Ms would have been awesome.”

“Will find more, Foggy.”

He gave Matt a small smile. “Yeah, maybe. Don’t worry about it. We have the MREs. That’s good enough for now. What else do you remember?”

“Keys,” he said.

Yeah, Foggy knew what he meant. Matt had a key ring with a bunch of different keys and one of those braided knot keychains. They had no idea what those keys might have opened at one time or another. Just something Matt had picked up during another scavenging run. Foggy had never bothered to find out.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Don’t know word. Is…” he got up and went into the kitchen where he retrieved an aerosol spray from one of the cupboards. It was an old can of bug spray that they likely would never need again.

“A spray can? Could you tell what was in it?”

“Yes. For… mm.” Matt then held up the shaving brush and rubbed his hand across his chin.

“Shaving cream?”

“Yes. I found. You want. Did want.”

Jesus, yes, Foggy vaguely remembered that he’d mentioned at some point he was thinking about shaving his beard off. If they ever found shaving cream and a decent razor. That had been weeks ago. How long had Matt been looking for that shit?

“It’s ‘wanted’, Matt. ‘You wanted.’ Do you remember anything else they took?”

“No. Is all. This is all.”

“That is all. _That’s_ all, Matt.”

“That’s all,” he muttered under his breath.

Good. This was good that he was repeating things. No lingering brain damage beyond what the virus had already claimed.

Matt was now fingering the shaving brush that, thankfully, looked like it hadn’t been lying out in the rain. He ran his fingers over the tips of the bristles, looking lost and forlorn.

“We should eat,” Foggy said to try and disrupt the heaviness in the air around them that was gonna drag them down if they let it. “Anyone hungry?”

There weren’t any enthusiastic cheers. Not even Matt perked up. Yes, of course he would eat, but not with zeal. Not today.

The day didn’t improve all that much. It started raining in the early afternoon. Big, grey drops that slid down the window panes. Matt was more tired than usual, quiet. Foggy had to reprimand him several times for picking at the scabs on his arms. He slept a lot, and Foggy let him, checking every so often if the tremor was still there. Eventually, Foggy fell asleep next to him. Karen was in the storage room next door. They slept for almost three hours, limbs tangled together, Matt’s shaking arm clinging to his waist. He’d missed this.

Matt only got up for his bathroom breaks, reluctant to be on his feet with his sense of balance so completely shot. One time he walked back into the living room and straight into Karen. His grabbing her arm made her yelp, stiffen, and spill half the glass of water she was carrying. Matt let go of her immediately as if he’d touched a hot potato.

He rambled at least five sorrys in a row, hanging his head, tilting sideways slightly before he could reorient his body.

Once recovered from the initial surprise, Karen said, “It’s okay,” and softly brushed his arm to make him aware where she was. He allowed himself a small, reconciliatory smile.

Dinner was Chicken Fajita and Beef Ravioli that they shared among the three of them. They knew the MREs would run out eventually, and they had started to be a little more economic with them. It was still great to have actual warm meals with actual cooked food and a decent sauce and everything.

When darkness was about to fall and Karen was finishing up with the dishes in the kitchen, Matt grabbed all of their blankets and moved over to the couch, arranging them around him. “Foggy, sleep here,” he instructed.

Foggy frowned. “Why are you on the couch? There isn’t enough room for the two of us.”

He drew his face into a disgusted expression. “Smells.”

This puzzled Foggy, but then he remembered. “No way. You can smell the pee? It was just a really small patch, and this was a week ago. How can you smell that?”

“Smells,” he repeated with more conviction.

Foggy sighed. “Okay, I believe you.”

Karen came back from the kitchen. “I’ll try to wash it out tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. Do you wanna take the couch tonight?”

Foggy wasn’t sure. It would be uncomfortable and cramped. Like back in the shelter, with the cot. He’d really grown to like the relative freedom of the futon’s big mattress.

“Matt, do we absolutely have to? I’d much rather sleep on the futon. Or you take the couch and I’ll sleep over here with Karen for a night. That’s _my_ proposal.”

Matt grumbled. Loudly. Muttering words Foggy couldn’t make out. But then he bundled up the blankets again and moved back over to the futon. “Smells.” He wrinkled his nose just to make a point.

“Yeah, deal with it. You’ve breathed in my stinky sweat every night for, like, two years. How are you complaining about a tiny patch of long-dry pee? You’ve grown way too complacent, my friend.”

“Complacent, what is this?”

“It’s when you get used to nice things and demand having better things when you should really be fucking grateful you have these nice things in the first place.”

Karen came back from the storage room with a piece of fabric in her arms. “I found a bed sheet I forgot we had stashed away. Would that help?”

Foggy shrugged. “I don’t know. Matt?”

“Don’t know.”

Foggy got up. “Let’s try it.”

Matt seemed to be relatively content with the setup, so they settled down for the night. Foggy made an extra effort and regaled them with his own rendition of the movie _Fanboys_ —which he explained was the story of a group of Star Wars fans who want to grant their best friend his last dying wish of getting to see the yet unreleased _The Return of the Jedi_ before he dies.

Karen fell asleep halfway through, which was a good thing because that meant she couldn’t call him on the fact that it wasn’t actually _The Return of the Jedi_ but _The Phantom Menace_ that Linus had wanted to see.

Of course Matt listened attentively until the end.

+-+-+-+-+

“Foggy, out.”

That was Matt’s demand the next day to remove the sutures from his head wound.

“That’s not proper English, Matt.”

“Foggy, take out stitches.” Then he added as an afterthought, “Please.”

Foggy gave him a wry smile. “That’s better, but still not a whole sentence.”

Matt sighed. “Can take… can you take out stitches, please?”

“ _The_ stitches. You always get lazy with your articles.”

Matt licked his lips, and took another stab at it, carefully and slowly. “Foggy, can you take out the stitches, please.”

“Yes, I can and I will.”

Matt was happy with that. They were probably itching. It took Foggy a few minutes, and Matt didn’t even whine too much. When he was done, Matt felt the wound carefully with his fingers.

“Hair off,” he started, then corrected himself. “You took hair off. _The_ hair off.”

“Yeah, I had to cut away a little bit of your hair there. I’m sorry, Matty.”

He huffed, clearly unhappy to lose even more of his mane. Foggy mused that, for Matt, the apocalypse could pretty much be summarized as a succession of really horrible haircuts.

“Does it still hurt?” Foggy asked.

“Not a lot.”

“And the dizziness?”

“Is better.”

Matt was indeed surer on his feet today, and a little more active. He showed Foggy his left hand. The tape was already smudged and frayed at the edges. “Foggy, you can... can you take this off, please?”

Foggy wasn’t sure he should. I had been a week, that bone couldn’t have healed enough yet. Matt’s hand was already fucked up enough as it was. “I think that should stay on a while longer, Matt. The bone is broken. You can feel that, right? We don’t want it to grow back all crooked and wrong. You still need that finger of yours.”

“Need, yes,” he muttered. “Don’t want it.”

“You don’t want your finger?”

Matt wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Don’t want this.” He prodded the tape above the upper joint.

“I know. But, Matt, if we take it off, your bone could grow back all wrong if you jostle it too much. I’d like the tape to stay on at least another week to give it a chance to heal properly. Especially since you’re gonna be moving around a lot more now. Do you understand that?”

“Foggy, yes.”

“So I will take it off if you insist, but I would really, _really_ like for you to keep it on for now. So tell me. What would you like me to do?”

Matt’s forehead pulled into a frown. Decisions against Foggy’s better judgment were always hard for him. “Is okay, this.”

“You wanna leave it on?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but I think we should put some new tape on it.”

Matt already held out his left hand to Foggy without asking. He was really fucking smart.

Once having taped the fingers back together, Foggy had him take off his hoodie to look at the cuts on his arm. They were healing nicely, some of them already closing. The writing was still clearly visible, and would be for a long time. Possibly forever.

Matt ran his fingers over the wounds as well, a deep, thoughtful frown etched into his forehead. “Foggy, what this says?”

Foggy did a double-take. How would he even know? “Did Karen talk to you about that?”

“Hm. No. Is not letters?”

Foggy stayed quiet. How was he going to explain this? He helplessly stared at Karen over on the couch. She shrugged just as helplessly, then mouthed, ‘Tell him.’

Closing his eyes, Foggy sighed, then adjusted his position so that he faced Matt. In this moment, he knew exactly what it was like for Matt, trying to find the right words in his head that could explain what he wanted to say without making a bad situation worse.

“Foggy, what?” Matt demanded. “Tell me.”

“Yeah, uh.” Matt could probably hear his pounding heart. He harrumphed. “I, uh… shit, man.”

Matt went in for the forehead bump. Gently, with all the love he had to give. It instantly pushed tears into Foggy’s eyes. Everything in the gesture screamed, _“Tell me, Foggy, you can tell me. I can take it. Just tell me, okay? We’ll figure it out together.”_

He sensed movement next to him, and suddenly Karen was there, at the edge of the futon, softly touching Foggy’s upper arm. “It’s okay, I’ll do it.”

Matt drew back from their hug, angling his face towards Karen. Expectant. Bracing himself, too. Foggy just watched with dread roiling in his stomach.

Karen’s expression was unreadable, her voice matter-of-fact. “Matt, we don’t know who attacked you, but we think it was a group of humans. They carved something into your arm. Freak. They took a knife and carved the word _Freak_ into your arm.”

The emotions rippled across his face, unconcealed and translating his reaction as clear as day. A single question formed that none of them knew how to answer. “Why?”

“We don’t know that,” Foggy said.

“But we can guess,” Karen added, and Foggy wished she hadn’t. Wasn’t this all he needed to know? Why did she always have to dig deeper? Too fucking deep? She went on, “Matt, remember when Foggy told you you’re special? We know that you’re very special. That you’re the amazing kind of special. But not everyone sees you that way.

“People who don’t know you, they see you as being feral. Feral and dangerous. Because you’re different, and most people don’t really know how to deal with that. So they get scared. Or angry. Or jealous. And then they do stupid things, or hurtful things. Like this, like carving things into your arm.”

Matt was still trying to process all of that. They gave him time, until he said, “Scared. Of me? Will not hurt them.”

“We know that, but _they_ didn’t,” Foggy told him. “They saw a feral and assumed you were going to attack them. Because that’s what all other ferals do.”

“Not freak,” he said in a small voice.

Oh Jesus. Here they were again. Matt’s stupid self-deprecation at its best. Foggy wanted to grab it by the lapels and yank it out. All thanks to a bunch of vindictive, anonymous assholes. He wanted to grab _them_ by the lapels and shake them until their tiny little brains rolled around in their heads like rubber balls. And that was putting it mildly.

Karen slid a tad closer to Matt and placed a cautious hand on his knee. “No, you’re not a freak. Foggy and I, we know that, and we’re the ones who count. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, okay? Because I promise you, if I catch these rat-bastards, I’m gonna kick the crap out of them, and then some. So hard they wouldn’t know up from down. Because you, Matt, you’re a hundred percent _not_ a freak.”

Something happy and warm spread through Foggy’s belly. Something unexpected. Because barely a couple of months ago, Karen herself had thought of Matt as nothing other than a freak. They had both come such a long way. It was nothing short of amazing.

“Not freak?” There was still doubt in Matt’s voice.

Foggy supplied, “Two hundred percent not a freak. And you know what? Those marks on your arm, they don’t _actually_ say Freak. The K is more like an I.”

This confused Matt again. “Why?”

“Because they probably didn’t have enough time to finish the job. We think they may have been interrupted.”

“Fr… Free…” Matt started, trying to figure out the letters, and failing halfway. “Foggy, what says? On arm.”

“Uh… I don’t know. Kinda like… free-ey-aye? Which is not a word. But we can make it into some kind of cool acronym if you want.”

“Acronym, what is this?”

“That’s when you shorten words to spell a different word, only shorter. Okay, uh, that’s a pretty shitty explanation.”

Karen helped out. “It’s like an abbreviation. You take the first letters of a string of words and make it into a kind of buzz word. Something that sounds cool and is easy to say. Like MRE. That stands for Meals Ready to Eat. Or CD. That’s short for compact disc.”

“Fe-ree-ey-aye short for…?”

Foggy thought for a moment. “Hm. Feral of Really Extraordinarily Amazing Intelligence?”

Matt let out a little, huffy laugh, and Karen giggled. Foggy confirmed, “Okay, we have a winner.”

Karen’s hand was still on Matt’s knee, and she squeezed it a little. “Hey, uhm, Matt? Can I ask you something?”

He tried to make his eyes look at her, and almost succeeded. “Karen, yes.”

“Can you really not remember anything from the attack? _Any_ thing? Just a tiny little detail, maybe?”

He didn’t say no right away and tilted his head around, closing his eyes. He was picking at the cut in the palm of his left hand again. It took a long time before he answered. “Not… don’t…. was outside. Wake up here. Don’t remember, Karen.” He sounded like he knew he was letting her down, wasn’t meeting some kind of bullshit expectation.

But she just squeezed his knee again, and assured him, “It’s okay, Matt. You don’t have to remember. But if you do, you can tell me. Or Foggy. Will you do that?”

“Yes, I will. I will do.”

“Good.” She patted his knee once, and got up. “Hey, you know what? I think this warrants a round of chocolate. Who’s in?”

Foggy raised his arm immediately, and Matt couldn’t say, “I want!” quickly enough.

+-+-+-+-+


	5. I Will Babble, I Will Bite

“Foggy.”

Matt’s voice woke him. It was low, just above a whisper. Growly. The _there’s-danger_ kind. Foggy knew it well. Trying to shake the sleepiness from his mind, he asked, “What is it, Matt?”

In the hazy, pre-sunrise light, he could make out Matt crouching on the futon next to him, ready to jump, muscles coiled, body alert. Foggy knew this stance, too. “Someone. Down. Garage.”

“There’s someone in the garage?” Shit. This wasn’t good. He was already halfway off the futon to slip into his shoes and grab his rifle in the corner.

“Outside,” Matt said, then another growl.

“Karen,” Foggy hissed. She was still asleep. He went over to her, shook her shoulder slightly, repeating her name.

She jumped, lashed out at him. Foggy lifted his arms defensively. “Easy, it’s just me.”

There was confusion on her face. “Foggy?”

“Yeah. Grab a weapon. Matt heard someone down in the garage.”

“Outside,” Matt repeated once more, then added, “Want to come in.”

“People?” Foggy asked.

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

This hadn’t happened before. Matt was good at defending his territory. And he’d staked quite a claim around their apartment. Half of Brooklyn must have his name on it by now.

Karen was quickly on her feet with her shotgun and the flashlight. Matt was already by the door to the stairs, curtain rod in hand. Foggy had the foresight to ask, “Matt, what kind of weapons do they have? Can you tell?”

He listened, rolled his head around a little. “Guns. Two, three. Don’t know, Foggy. Outside.”

Yeah, well, Matt could do a lot, smell the gunpowder, but not exactly sense every detail through a wall. They might have to play this by ear.

Matt stopped them before they started down the stairs. In the weak light coming in through the kitchen window, Foggy could see his eyebrows crumple, his eyes darting from side to side.

“What is it, Matt?”

His head twitched; he blinked slowly. “Foggy. Fam-familiar. Them. Familiar. Smells.”

Foggy gave Karen a glance. “You know them, Matt? How?”

He let out a gentle huff and touched the side of his head.

Karen was all over it in half a second. She spoke in a hiss, but Foggy knew that all she wanted to do was yell. “The ones who tried to kill you?!”

“Yes.” Something hardened in Matt’s expression—a darkened mix of anger, and fear, and distant confusion. “Foggy. They took.” His growl started up, rumbling low in his chest. It was the growl that Foggy knew not to fuck around with. “They _took_.”

“I know, buddy. They aren’t gonna take anymore. Come on.”

The three of them padded down the stairs as quietly as they could, listening intently. There were scraping noises outside the reinforced garage door, hushed voices they couldn’t hear well enough to understand.

When they got to the garage floor, Matt had his tongue pinned between his lips, his expression all tension and focus. He adjusted the curtain rod in his hands. Foggy really hoped he didn’t have to use the fucking thing.

He breathed into Foggy’s ear, “Up.”

Up. Roof. Right. Foggy momentarily gripped Matt’s shoulder. “Your finger. Be _careful_ ,” he whispered, as quiet as he could.

Matt gave him an expression like, _‘No shit, Fogs,’_ and drifted to the stairs, all shadows and silence, and Foggy knew if he hadn’t been looking right at him, Matt could have avoided detection entirely. Christ, he was quiet. Foggy couldn’t even hear his feet on the ground as he climbed the stairs.

Karen turned her head and watched him, then brought the shotgun up, gesturing with her head over to the garage door.

Foggy chewed his tongue, but still wrapped his hands around the door handle, catching her gaze again, trying to ask, _‘Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?’_ without actually speaking.

She nodded at him.

Jesus. He let out a silent sigh, shaking his head once—what the fuck were they _doing—_ and yanked the garage door upward, as quickly as he could, all at once.

And there they were—three people. Two men, one woman. Karen followed the movement of the door with the barrel of the shotgun; she had it shoved into the closest person’s face before the door was all the way open.

“Morning,” she said—rather pleasantly, Foggy thought. “Drop that.”

Foggy locked the door to the track and hefted the rifle, training it on them. His heart was pounding. He’d never done this shit before. Fighting off ferals and aliens was one thing, but people capable of speech?

Karen had the shotgun shoved against the woman’s nose. There was a pistol clutched in the stranger’s shaking hands; Karen shouted again for her to drop it, and she did, quick and violent like it was on fire.

Foggy lifted his rifle and centered it on the nearest one, a weedy-looking man with bruised eyes and _really_ bad dental hygiene. He tried to keep the fear off of his face, tried to look tough, like Karen. Jesus, she was scary.

“Good,” Karen said, then motioned with her head to the two men. “You, too. Weapons down. Nobody needs to die today.” Her voice was a harsh bark. Boss-mom-Karen. More like fucking _mob-boss_ -mom Karen.

They tossed their weapons to the ground and Karen smiled humorlessly. “You guys wanna tell me why the fuck you were trying to get in here?”

The woman’s lips twisted in a rough sneer. “For your shit, bitch.”

“Sorry, haven’t got anything to spare,” Karen said, and there was a falsely sweet lilt to her voice that reminded Foggy of how she was before all this, that kind and gentle girl that had gone drinking with him and yelled about eels outside Matt’s apartment. Funny the way it is.

None of the three people talked, so Karen continued. “So here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna back away, slowly, to the road, and then you’re going to turn around, and go back to whatever shit-hole you crawled out of. There’s nothing for you here. If you turn back, I will shoot you. If you come back here again, I will shoot you. Understand?”

The woman was shaking, but not with illness—none of the three were infected. Even in the half-light of the approaching morning, he could tell. “If you’re going to kill us, bitch, just fucking kill us. Don’t stand around yapping about it.”

A smile spread across Karen’s face as her eyes caught sight of something behind them. The expression terrified him more than anything Foggy had ever seen on her. Hungry, furious. He followed her gaze, trying to be quick, but everything felt like it was in slow motion. There was a shadow in the street, near an overturned car, and—

“Oh, if _I’m_ not gonna kill you,” Karen said, “maybe _he_ will.”

And there Matt was, darting in from out of nowhere with the curtain rod in his hands, a furious snarl on his face and an engine growl bubbling out of his throat. He’d gone around the other way, Foggy thought, cutting off their escape route.

He took the bigger man down with a single brutal swing to his side—and Foggy heard the goddamned ribs crunch. Painful as hell, but non-fatal. Matt should have been beating the fucker’s brains out like the fucker had nearly done to him. The other two caught sight of him and panicked, the woman nearly climbing on top of Karen in her rush to get away from Matt.

Karen simply reversed the shotgun in her hands and brought the butt of it down on the woman’s skull, stunning but not killing her.

The third one was trying to run, which was really the worst thing he could have done. Matt huffed a rolling snarl and gave chase, still the fastest feral that Foggy had ever seen, and overtook the man in a few short seconds, swinging out with his metal bludgeon. Brutal precision. The noise it made when it connected with the man’s ear sounded like a wooden plank hitting a rotted fruit. He dropped into a heap and Matt stood over him, growling.

The man Matt had knocked down by the door grunted, and Foggy kept his rifle on the two people in front of him. But the woman wasn’t even paying attention to that—her focus was locked on Matt, her chest heaving with panicky breaths. There was something on her face, some sort of emotion, stronger than fear. Familiarity. Recognition.

Matt was right. These _were_ the people that had nearly killed him. And the woman looked shocked as all hell that the feral they’d left unconscious and bleeding on a street corner a week ago was still alive. Still alive, and now leaving the third man whimpering on the ground as he turned and stalked back over to Karen like a vengeful fucking ghost. He was still growling.

Karen spoke first, the sneer loud and sharp in her words. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Being on the ground, defenseless.” She never lowered the shotgun. “I bet he never even laid a goddamn hand on you, you fucking psychopaths.”

Foggy didn’t dare to speak or move. The entire situation was a stick of dynamite lit from both ends, and he really didn’t want to be stuck in the explosion. He kept himself still, kept the rifle trained on the man in front of him.

The man was clutching his side, whining in pain. He turned his head slightly and hissed to the woman, “Jesus, Patty, you said it was _dead_ —”

Karen made a noise—total fury—and lifted the shotgun, likely with the intention to blow his fucking brains out all over the damn street.

“No!” Matt made a low whine and lunged, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun and pointing it upward. The curtain rod clattered to the ground. “No no no no no, Karen! No, Karen, no.”

She looked at Matt like he’d just grown a second head. Foggy wasn't sure he'd ever been so close to her before, nearly chest-to-chest as they barked at each other. “These people tried to kill you!”

“Karen, Karen, no. Is okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay! You almost died!”

Matt twitched his head. “Is okay,” he repeated, keeping his hand on the barrel, ignoring the woman panting for breath on the ground beneath him. “They... mm. Scared, Karen. Afraid. Afraid of me.”

Karen tried to wrestle the shotgun out of Matt’s grip. He held firm. “You think that’s an excuse for what they did to you, Matt? You were fucking comatose!”

“Excuse, yes,” Matt said, trying to center his gaze on her. “Is okay, Karen.”

She loosened her grip on her shotgun, and Matt let her lower it. “Why?” she asked. “Why let them go, Matt? They don’t deserve it!”

Matt ignored her, turned his attention to the woman as she scrambled to her feet, staggering to one side, catching herself with her hand against the door. The man was struggling to get up, clutching himself, blood dripping from his mouth. Maybe it _had_ been fatal. Foggy really fucking hoped it was.

“It’s a freak,” the woman hissed. “It’s gonna kill both of you fucking idiots.”

Matt let out a snorting noise, and another growl, leaving the curtain rod on the ground as he drifted closer to the woman. He leaned in and spoke very carefully, each word chosen with a slow deliberation. Even with the stumble present in his soft voice, Foggy felt his blood run cold. “Do not come back. I will kill you.”

“Eat me, you fucking feral fr—”

Matt swung out with his right fist faster than Foggy’s eyes could track, striking her in the face and knocking her flat to the fucking ground. Foggy expected him to keep going, to tear into her like the feral he was, the way they'd torn into him, but he didn’t. Both his hands were shaking as he fought to rein in his own fury, the growl in his chest threatening to bubble over into a snarl.

“Go away,” Matt said again, the growl so loud and strong that his words were almost incomprehensible. Almost. “Go. Away.”

She got to her feet again, this time pulling the man up with her. Blood was streaming from her nose. Foggy could tell, even in the dim light, that it was broken. There was a look on her face, though—something that made his chest warm with vindication. Matt had still spared them, when they hadn’t done the same to him. And he was a fucking _feral._

Karen’s face was twisted up in anger, but she waggled her shotgun in the woman’s direction, then gestured with it to the second man, groaning on the pavement. “And take him with you, too. You’re stinking up the whole street.”

Foggy blinked when he realized she was right. They smelled like ammonia. Fucking cat piss. No wonder Matt recognized them.

Still, the woman and the man hauled the third one to his feet. Matt kept his focus trained on them, head tilting, huffing heavy growls through his nose.

She looked over her shoulder and attempted to get one last jab in. “That bastard deserved it! It’s a goddamn freak!”

Foggy finally found his voice. “Yeah, and he’s _our_ freak, bitch,” he spat at her, training his rifle on them still. “You’d do well to remember never to come back here or lay your fucking hands on any of us if you value your life at all.” That sounded tough, right? His voice only cracked a little.

Both he and Karen kept their weapons up, but didn’t make any attempts to pull the trigger. Matt was bending down towards the ground, picking something up. It made a metallic jingle in his shaking left hand.

It was his key ring. And that made a certain kind of sense. These assholes probably thought one of them was going to unlock the garage door. Yeah, fat chance, suckers. Foggy allowed himself a malicious smile that reeked of spitefulness and schadenfreude.

Karen picked up the weapons that they had dropped on the ground. A small-caliber rifle and a poorly-kept sawed-off shotgun. Then she trained her eyes on the woman outside again, watched her and the man drag the stumbling figure of their buddy away with obvious effort. Matt paced restlessly, as if waiting to see if they’d turn back.

“Fucking ingrates,” Karen muttered, a sneer still on her face. She turned toward Matt. “Are you okay?”

“Mm? Karen, yes.”

“I can’t believe you let them live.”

Matt’s head twitched. He spoke softly, the growl draining out of him. “Better. Better than them. Not... mm. They are not good.”

The three figures vanished around a street corner in the distance. Karen closed the door and made extra sure it was locked.

Matt said, “Will go up.”

Foggy nodded. He’d want to sniff them out from the roof, make sure they left his territory and didn’t come back. “Don’t do anything stupid. And take your warm jacket,” he reminded Matt. Geez, total boss-dad-Foggy reaction. He had to stop thinking of Matt as a damn toddler, but he just couldn’t help it.

“Yes, Foggy,” Matt grumbled. An appropriate reaction.

All three of them trudged back up the stairs, and Matt parked his curtain rod, donned his jacket, and climbed out the window. Foggy closed it behind him, leaving it open just a crack so Matt could pull it back up if he needed to.

Foggy put his rifle back in the corner and sank down on the futon, the adrenaline slowly ebbing away. He felt jittery.

Karen seemed dead calm. She was already in the storage room, taking a closer look at their loot. Maybe she was cut out for this way more than he was.

He turned his head sideways and looked out the window. The sun was coming up, illuminating the ruined city in a kind of dirty, orange-greenish glow. Some days, it may have given him a certain sense of reassurance that he’d almost gotten used to the shift in color spectrum, but today it brought little comfort.

He got up and decided he needed something familiar. The one constant in his life that he’d almost lost a few days ago. He gathered up the old, scratchy blanket and put it in his otherwise empty backpack. On second thought, he added Matt’s once bright red and now dusty red-grey scarf and his scuffed trainers that were still tucked away under the futon. Shouldering the rucksack, he opened the window, ready to climb out and up the ladder.

Matt was already leaning over the edge of the roof when Foggy put his foot on the first rung. “Foggy, come up?” he asked.

“Yeah. Can I?”

“Yes.”

As if Matt would say no. He loved having Foggy up there, to have company in one of the places he considered specifically his realm. It didn’t happen often that Foggy made the effort, because it wasn’t all that easy to climb up that last leg. The ladder didn’t reach all the way to the top, and Matt had to help Foggy get onto the actual roof.

Matt’s lanky arms pulled him up this time, too. Mostly his right one. Foggy grunted when he finally plopped down on the other side of the roof’s ledge.

Matt had a quizzical look on his face. “You brought? What is?” He pointed at the backpack.

“Don’t get too excited.” He unpacked the blanket. “I know it’s kinda wussy, but I don’t like sitting on what feels like a sheet of ice. So there. Also,” he put Matt’s shoes on the ground, “I brought these. For you. Put them on.”

Matt grumbled unintelligible syllables. Foggy didn’t know what it was. It couldn’t be wearing things on his feet, because he seemed to like his socks. Maybe he just liked to feel the ground beneath his feet? But it was fucking winter, so…

The scarf was caked in dust and smelled of the city and Matt’s sweat. Foggy shook it out twice. It enveloped them in a cloud of dust. Matt grumbled again, then said, “Foggy, not. I don’t like.”

“That thing’s covered in fucking dust. What do you do with it when you’re out there? Roll it around in the dirt before you put it on?”

“No. I wear. Is warm.”

So he liked it, liked something warm wrapped around his neck. The reason Karen had insisted on giving it to him in the first place. Against Foggy’s better judgment. Score one for Team Page.

Foggy had to help him with the shoes, broken finger and all. Then, once Foggy had found himself a spot with a view, Matt settled down next to him.

“Can you still hear them?” Foggy asked him.

Matt’s head twitched, he turned it to one side. His fingers fiddled with the tassels of the scarf. Better that than his damn scabs or the medical tape. “Are going away.”

“Anything we need to worry about?”

“Mm. No. Not. Don’t… think. Don’t think this.”

“Think so.”

“Don’t think so.”

Foggy watched Matt, the events of what had happened still coursing through his head. “Matty, are you okay?”

“Am— I am okay, Foggy.”

“And you’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“No. Am a lot okay. Mm, head not hurts a lot. Is better. Foggy.”

“Okay, well, that’s good to hear, but we really need to work on your sentences. Say that again for me with the right grammar.”

There was the smallest of pouts in his expression, but he indulged Foggy anyway. Slowly, with so many pauses, but he was getting better. There was less stuttering. “Foggy, I am okay. The head hurts not… more much. Mm. Ughn.”

Yeah, he’d somehow realized that wasn’t quite right. Foggy waited another moment if there was more, but there wasn’t. “It should be ‘my head doesn’t hurt that much anymore’, or ‘my head hurts less’.”

“Hurts less. _It_ hurts less.”

Of course he’d take the fucking shortcut. “You can also say ‘very’ instead of ‘a lot’, you know?”

“My head hurts very less.”

Foggy wanted to face-palm. “Yeah, well, okay, not like that. I mean, geez, how do I explain this to you? English is really complicated.”

“No shit.”

“Stop smartassing. We need to teach you more things that are actually useful.”

“Is useful. This is useful. Very a lot useful.”

“No, it’s either ‘very’ or a ‘a lot’. Not both. Come on, you’re smart, you can figure it out.”

Matt didn’t say anything for a long moment, seemed to roll something around in his head. Then he said, “Foggy, you said I am freak. _Your_ freak. Why? Said I am not freak.”

He sighed. The dude’s memory was unbelievable. “Yeah, I may have said that to them, but it was just… I didn’t really mean it when I said it.”

“Why said it if not mean it?”

“It’s, uh… It’s hard to explain. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean. You know, in the moment, when they don’t have enough time to think, or when they want to make a point. I wanted to make a point. To tell them that... uh…

“See, the thing is, these guys, there were probably strung out on some drug shit. Crystal meth or whatever. They’re not the kind of people you can reason with. Have a decent conversation with. That’s probably why I said it, cause it made sense at the time. It would have made sense to them.

“But Matt, you’re not a freak. Please believe that. Cause now I mean it—a hundred percent. You are _not_ a freak. You’re amazing.”

Matt seemed content with that explanation, but there was something simmering underneath. Foggy could read it on his face. His thumb and index finger pulled at one of the scarf tassels that was already coming apart. “What is it?”

“Is it?”

“You wanna tell me something. Or ask me something.”

“Yes.”

“Then out with it.”

“I… mm. Karen. Karen said I let live. Let them live. Ask why. Why let go away. Is… Foggy? Is… mm.”

“Is what, Matt?”

“Is okay?”

“Are you asking me if you did the right thing?”

“Yes, Foggy. Right thing? I did right thing? I am sorry.”

“You’re sorry? For what? For sparing their lives? I mean, are you fucking kidding me? If there was ever _one_ right thing to do, it was that. They had surrendered their weapons, they weren’t a threat anymore. Not killing them was totally the right thing.”

“Why Karen not… think right thing?”

“Do you remember when I told you she hurts inside? It’s got to do with that. I’m not exactly sure what happened to her, and she won’t talk about it, but something happened that changed her. Something that made it hard for her to feel things, to let herself feel things.

“I think it just hurts her too much, so she tries to shut herself off from it. That’s why sometimes she says or does things that are cold. Cruel, even. She’s afraid. And that’s terrible, and it sucks, and maybe it shouldn’t be an excuse, but at least it’s an explanation.”

“Karen is better,” Matt supplied.

“Yeah, she’s getting better.”

“Very better.”

Oh God, Matt was never gonna get the hang of this, and Foggy already regretted having taught him the meaning of ‘very’.

“We need to give her more time. She’ll come around. She’s already come a long way.”

Matt hummed in acknowledgement, and Foggy knew Matt would be giving her all the time and benefit of the doubt in the world. Because he was Matt—tenacious and forgiving. It was as simple as that.

Foggy had a little moment, and put his arm around Matt’s shoulder to draw him closer. Matt scooted over and leaned into Foggy’s side. They sat like that for a while, until Matt said, “They are gone.”

Foggy allowed himself a small smile. “Then let’s hope they never come back.”

“Hey guys?” Karen’s voice filtered up to them.

Foggy got up and leaned over the edge of the roof. She was poking her head out of the window. “Who wants hot drinks?”

“Fuck yeah!” Foggy said. “Bring some for Matt, too.”

Ten minutes later, they took the tote bag she had slung over her shoulder and helped her up. She was much better at mastering that last leg without the ladder than Foggy. She could probably get up there on her own if she had to.

The tote bag yielded a plastic bottle she had filled with hot chocolate—enough for the three of them. Three mugs that clinked against each other. One of the wheat bread MREs with cheese spread for each of them. Foggy spread the blanket out more, and it was a picnic. In the frickin’ middle of winter on a roof in Brooklyn. What had the world come to?

Karen poured them all a mug. Thin wads of smoke swirled in the air, and it smelled nice.

Matt was all over it in half a second. “Chocolate?”

His hands wrapped around the warm mug as soon as Karen handed it to him. His left hand only touched it very gingerly. The finger still bothered him, and that cut on the inside of his palm was probably sensitive to the heat. The tremor didn’t help. Yet, there was a content smile tugging at his lips as he took the first sip.

Foggy started opening the MREs and spread the too yellow cheese spread over the bread as best as he could. It smelled of plastic and monosodium glutamate, and tasted just as badly. But it was still better than dry bread. He handed the first one to Matt.

“Here, buddy. Have at it.”

Matt took it and bit off a bite Foggy couldn’t believe would even fit in his mouth. He chewed happily.

“Thank you, Foggy.” It came out muffled by three pounds of bread and imitation cheese.

And so they sat and ate, with Matt trying to worm his way between Foggy and Karen, just because he could. They huddled together against the cold, sipping their hot beverages that tasted of watery instant cocoa powder. It was odd and sweet and glorious. Their fucked up little trio, kicking the apocalypse’s ass one day at a time.

Between bites, Karen asked Matt, “Did you manage to track them? Do you know where they shack up?”

“Shack up, what is this?”

“Where they live.”

“Yes. Far. Miles, a lot. Very miles.” It sounded like _berry miles_.

Foggy groaned. “I told him he can use ‘very’ instead of ‘a lot’. It’s not going as well as I hoped.”

Karen let out a little laugh. “Okay, maybe we can fix that. See, Matt, you don’t use ‘very’ when you refer to things. You use it with adjectives—adjectives are describing words. They describe how things are. Like, uh, big. Or small. Or hungry. You can say you’re very hungry. Something’s very big. Or very much. It makes the adjective stronger. I know it’s not all that easy to understand. English can be kind of a confusing language.”

He smiled a small smile, soaked up all the information. “Is okay. I understand. Very much. Very good. Karen is very good.”

Foggy puckered his lips in a mock pout. “And what about me?”

“You are very worried.” His expression was half triumphant, half mischievous.

“I am. About you. All the time.”

“I know. Foggy, don’t. I am okay. Now okay.” He paused a moment, then, “Foggy? I like you very a lot. Mm, no, very much.”

Foggy leaned to one side and bumped his shoulder against Matt’s. “Stop with this sappy shit, okay?”

“ _Very_ sappy shit.”

Now Matt was just latching on to the new word for the sake of being annoying. Or for the sake of letting repetition drill it into his active vocabulary. It was a good thing, his way to retain information, but it could also be irritating as hell.

Karen sniffed her nose once. It was red from the cold air. “Hate to break up the schmoop party, but can we just go back for a minute to what happened down there just now?”

Foggy let out an exasperated huff. “Yeah, thanks for that. Cause excuse us for deserving a little positive energy every once in a while, huh?”

Karen ignored it and plowed right on. “Seriously, Matt, why did you let them go? What if they come after you again?”

He didn’t even blink. “Told them. I will kill.”

“And what if that’s not enough? They didn’t exactly strike me as reasonable. Or smart. What if they have long distance sniper rifles and know how to use them? You’re good, but you’re not _that_ good.”

Yeah, well, Matt wouldn’t have considered that. His mind didn’t really work that way. It was more of a worst-case Karen scenario to concoct.

Foggy cut in, “Even if they _had_ a sniper rifle, which I’m fairly sure they don’t, they wouldn’t be able to hit shit with it. Especially long-distance. They’re meth addicts. You smelled them. They can’t even walk straight, let alone aim a precision rifle. So don’t put your paranoid ideas in his head, okay?”

Matt turned his head in Karen’s direction. “Karen, why you want? Want to kill them?”

Something unpleasant flitted across her face. “They tried to kill you. Hell, they even _thought_ they’d killed you. I didn’t think they deserved to live. Give back as you were given. That’s what I say.”

“They are not good. I want to be better.”

She gave him a sardonic smile. “That’s a very noble notion. Maybe an admirable one. I’ve just had the experience that it gets you killed more easily. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Letting them go will make them come back stronger. Hungrier. More vengeful. But I hope to God you’re right.”

“Karen, trust.”

Matt didn’t elaborate. Karen didn’t ask. Maybe they had to agree to disagree on this one. Foggy still wasn’t sure where he stood. All he knew was that he was glad they didn’t have to dump any bodies in the Hudson today.

After a minute of silence, the occasional cold gust of wind ruffling their hair, Matt held out his mug to Karen. “More?”

“Geez, you finished it already?”

“I like a lo— very much.”

Foggy couldn’t help but grin at that. To Karen, he said, “This is all your doing. I swear, it was that Snickers bar, after the tooth incident. He’s been all over the chocolate and candy ever since.”

She lifted her arms in a not-quite apology. “Hey, don’t blame me for his taste buds and weird brain, okay?”

“Matt’s sweet tooth notwithstanding, I want to blame you for a lot of things. Famine. The weather. The apocalypse...”

He’d meant for it to come out tongue-in-cheek, but he realized it hadn’t been the right thing to say. Karen thought so too. “That’s not even funny, Foggy.”

“I know. I’m sorry. That just slipped out.”

She nodded. Apology accepted. Her expression softened. “I’ve never told you this, but I’m glad this worked out. I’m glad we’re together. Cause out there alone, I, uh...”

She didn’t have to say it. “Yeah, me too,” Foggy told her.

Even Matt found it important enough to verbally agree. “Like very much you here. Alone not good.”

Foggy looked at him, studied his expression. He looked genuinely happy, even with the healing wounds and the unwanted _Freak_ tattoo tainting his world. And if there ever was such a thing as contentment on Karen’s face, it was there, too.

“Look at us,” he said. “One big, happy family. When did this happen?”

“Maybe it was meant to,” she said.

He grimaced. “Nah. Don’t give me that fate bullshit. We make our own lives. And even with all of this shit around,” he gestured at the shards of the shattered city around them, “I’d say we’re still doing swimmingly. I could do with a little less near-death experiences, but, well, I guess that’s just what it is.”

“There’s this quote I like. ‘The trick is to assume your life is going to work out. Of course, it never does, so you do the next best thing: you take it one disaster at a time.’ Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“What’s that? Sartre or something?”

“Nah. An old TV show.”

“Anything I’d know?”

“ _Early Edition_? About a guy who was delivered the paper a day early every day. Tried to save people’s lives with it.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that have been useful? Maybe we could have avoided all this.”

“Except there weren’t really any newspaper offices left the day after the invasion.”

Foggy nodded. “True. Well. Not that a lowly three-person law firm could have done anything anyway, right?”

“Guess not.”

“I mean, can you believe it’s been over two years since the world crashed and burned?”

“Seems like half an eternity ago.”

“Do you ever wish you could go back?” Foggy asked.

“Don’t you?”

“All the time.”

“Not go away,” Matt piped in.

“No, Matt, we mean back in time. To before all this. I know you don’t remember, but it was a different world. Everyone had food and water and jobs and money and, well, you had a secret identity. But that’s a whole other story for another time.”

“Tell story, Foggy.”

Karen gave him a quizzical look, but Foggy wasn’t deterred. “I will, I promise. But not now, okay?”

Matt pouted, so Foggy reached over and smoothed a little strand of unruly hair away from his forehead. Matt shifted to lean into the touch, just like Foggy had predicted.

He lifted his cocoa mug. “Come on, let’s say a toast. To, uhm...”

“To the future,” Karen supplied.

“To fewer near-death experiences,” Foggy added, then nudged Matt. “You gotta say one, too.”

“Say what?”

“A toast. Something you wish for. Something you wish we can have. Or experience.”

“You. Karen. With you more. Long. A lot.”

“To us—for the rest of the days we have left on this earth,” Foggy translated. “Raise your mug, Matt.”

He did, and they all clinked theirs against his. They would hold on to this moment for a long time.

+-+-+-+-+

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the actual Sunshine fic will now be switching to an every-other-week posting schedule until Ash can build her backlog back up. It’s mostly gone now and she doesn't want to rush anything out. It'll also give her more time for prompts, so it’s a win all around. You can send her Sunshine prompts [over on her Tumblr](http://sunshineverse.tumblr.com/ask).


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